Winter's Treasures
by Virodeil
Summary: The Bifrost might be broken; but before that, it had been aimed towards Jötunheim. Loki fell, and he fell towards where the Bifrost had been aimed last, to where the jagged shards of energy were still falling. He made an impact on landing; oh, he did.
1. Failure

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: A hard lesson to learn, on the cost of a life.

Chapter tags: Character Study, Character Development, Grief/Mourning

1\. Failure

` _I fail at everything._ ` It was the only thing that ran in Loki's mind as his body plunged into the abyss, twisting here and there like a rag doll, buffeted by the remmnants of the energy he had previously unleashed through the Bifrost. It repeated again and again and again and again even as consciousness began to leave him, slowly and inexorably.

` _Fail,_ ` was the last thing his mind knew, all with raw, jagged certainty.

Consciousness, sluggish and sticky and bitter like ahrro-tree sap in late autumn, brought with itself total disorientation. The only thing that registered to the delirious mind at first, with an ample amount of surprise that it did not recognise the cause of but the aching heart knew all too well, was, ` _I am alive._ `

And then, knowledge of the outside world seeped in, before knowledge of self could take hold of the yet scattered attention: ` _Dark. Cold. Damp. Earthy. Hard. Rough. Unfamiliar. Seiðr._ `

None of the information made sense. The pieces were all jumbled, whirling and hopping about like busy little bees in spring.

The mind and heart clicked into synchronisation on the ` _seiðr_ ` piece, however, once it plopped in. The knowledge and power were instinctive and bone-deep, soul-deep, removable only by death.

And this person was _not_ dead.

Not _yet_.

` _But why? What happened?_ `

Seiðr – _another's_ seiðr – prodded at the mind. It recoiled, threw up shields, tried to lash out.

"I apologise, child. I needed to know if you were yet asleep."

` _Deep. Gravelly. Unfamiliar. So close._ _ **Too close**_ _! So far above…._ `

"Who are you?" the lips tried to let out. But what came out was just a weak, reverberating croak that hurt the throat.

A small shard of ice was pushed between the lips. It was automatically sucked at.

It did not taste like ice. ` _Soft. Thick. Smooth. Pleasantly cool. A little bland. A little sweet. A little sour. A little salty._ ` It exploded into some kind of odd warmth in the stomach, travelled to all directions almost instantly, strengthened everything that it touched with intimate knowledge.

Addicting.

The throat moaned for more, without the mind's permission.

It was given.

Again, and again, and again, and again.

The body regained strength and power with each little bit – generously given, greedily taken.

The throat moaned again when some time had passed without such sustenance. But no more heavenly bits of ice-like little shards were given.

"I apologise, child." The speaker sounded truly remorseful, so impossibly gentle, even _tender_. So calm and so quiet, at that; _peaceful_ , for such a deep, gravelly voice – which general timbre the mind half remembered as being hostile.

"I will need some strength for myself as well, to hunt and forage," the speaker continued, and the mind found itself lagging back, buoyed by that tone. "The storm season is upon us."

` _Some strength for myself? Storm season?_ ` The mind tried to comprehend, tried to tease out details and backgrounds, tried to make sense of it all, but it failed.

` _Fail. I fail at everything._ ` Something echoed as if from the deep past. The mind recoiled; the heart as well.

The throat let out a pathetic, embarrassing whimper. The body tried to curl into itself.

In vain.

` _Fail._ `

"Hush, child. Let us pray to Ýmir that the wilds will be aplenty today. I shall be able to nurse you more, if so." Rough but gentle fingers – ` _So huge!_ ` – combed through the hair. A sweeter memory echoed in the mind, triggered by the gesture. The body leant into the touch, and the throat let out a contented purr.

"Sleep now, child. Sleep now. May Ýmir guard you. May They guide your dreams to sweet snows." Fondness was in the gravelly voice, alongside sadness and a subtly permeating heartache. The rough but gentle fingers never ceased their hypnotic stroking. And now a tiny sliver of seiðr was added to it, whispering – _promising_ , as only pure intent could – about rest and safety.

The self obeyed.

A new routine was soon established: Awaken, suckle at a few ice-shard-like bits, sleep.

The owner of the gravelly voice liked to stroke hair, apparently. The self liked to receive it – nearly as much as the crystalised strength and warmth that the gravelly voice always offered upon awakening. And, without failing, the hair stroking, added with that bit of seiðr-tinged prayer about restful dreams, preceded each moment of slumber.

It was nice, not to fail or be failed for once, although the self did not know – _did not want to know_ – when was the last time it had failed at something.

After all, the bitterer echoes of memories were firm on one point: ` _I fail at everything._ `

The body recovered first. The mind – what shards of it remaining in the head – awakened next. The heart, the skittish thing that it was, healed its most jagged edges last.

The throat could now form the question the self had tried to pose at the first awakening. The body could now leave the bedding of stone and snow and old, rough fur covering if it so wished. The eyes could now open to behold the look – the basic identity – of the tender, attentive caregiver, likewise.

But the self did not do any of those.

Because the heart, the skittish thing that it was, did not wish to meet with reality.

And, unlike in the memories of the deep past that the self refused to touch, the gravelly voice let it remain in the comfort of darkness, anonymyty and self-chosen immobility. The ice-shard-like treat came rarely now, but it was substituted by a surprisingly clear and pleasant humming from the gravelly voice, so the self did not mind it – not too much, at any rate.

The owner of the gravelly voice seemed huge and terribly skinny, in comparison to the self. A part of the mind always shrieked in worry – whether for the self or for the gravelly voice, the mind did not wish to specify – whenever they shared the bedding for sleep. However, a greater – much greater – part of it purred in delight in tandem with the throat, always, when that huge, bony frame enveloped the self thoroughly in coolness that felt so much like a memory of warmth.

The gravelly voice was rarely home, though. Its presence became even rarer as the wind outside began to whip about ferociously more often than not, so the closeness was yet another treat that was gradually withdrawn.

The clear but pleasant humming was the weather's next victim. It was scratchy and weak, and even a little bit shaky at times, now; the hair stroking that accompanied it, likewise. The gravelly voice – not only the humming – even quavered, some time afterwards, when there was only one ice-shard-like treat to have and yet the throat – _the self_ – moaned for more.

And then, one moment, the gravelly voice whispered, "I apologise, child," as the two of them huddled on the bedding while a storm raged outside. No elaboration followed, to explain the apology, and the self still felt reluctant to speak, let alone to demand for such answer, so the both of them fell into silence. The big, ponderous heartbeats audible to one ear sufficed to quell the questions, and the pair of huge, skinny arms enfolding the body lulled the mind into slumber.

But upon the next awakening, the heartbeats were still, and the enfolding arms were now like cage bars to the body. A sharp, vaguely cloying smell filled the nose, emanating from the cold, hardened surface that had not been there before sleep had come.

The owner of the gravelly voice did not stir or call out or actively try to hinder, as the body squirmed away from the odor and hardened surface that was everywhere.

The eyes opened at last, as the body got free and tumbled down the high platform of the bedding.

They looked up, and saw a huge but skinny bluish grey being lying unmoving on the platform. It lied on one side with arms hooked on each other, creating a circle big enough for a comparably small body. Darkened markings decorated its face and body and limbs, simple and few but there. Its eyes were closed as if in peaceful repose.

` _Jötun,_ ` the part of the mind that had always been aware – guarded, worried, suspicious – whispered. Memory echoes of war and monsters brushed conscious recall. But, again, the mind recoiled.

` _Healer,_ ` the heart insisted, parrying, twisting up into a developing ache that threatened to burst into agony and loss and loneliness.

` _Dead._ `

The self could not recoil, could not veer away.

There was nothing – _nobody_ – to veer away to; no longer.

Reality turned out as bitter and cloying as the odor of death was.

The body – _this_ body, still living, still breathing, despite all odds and efforts – crumpled onto the rough stone floor before the bed platform, as if a desperate supplicant before a monarch. Sobs tore out from the throat that had only known demands for food and purrs of contentment before this moment in this unknown land.

` _Who are you?_ ` the mind wanted to shriek into the unhearing ears of the unnamed, unknown monster that had given its _everything_ away _to him, for him, because of him_. ` _I was Loki of Asgard. I am a monster. You are not a monster._ _ **Live**_ _. Let me die in your stead. Let me die as I planned._ `

The self – _he_ – did not stir, could not cease weeping, refused to leave, as footsteps came near from behind. A pair of hands – stormy cerulean, slender, far smaller than _those_ – sought to tug him to his feet, not long after. The newcomer – a monster, it must be; _another monster_ – was weeping as well, but softly, as if long spent already.

"Let Elder Vrelkki sleep in peace, little one," came the entreaty, next, in the same scratchy, quavering voice as _that one's_ last humming had been.

A parting song. A last bit of comfort. From a monster to a monster. ` _And I was willfully ignorant about it. I failed to recognise it, failed to find out._ `

` _I fail at everything,_ ` the memory – now sharp as a jagged knife's edge – offered, and reality concurred.

But this failure, it was one of the greatest.


	2. Impacts

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Denial set in. And regrets came, always too late.

2\. Impacts

The dwelling Loki had found himself ensconced in, it resembled more a stone hole than a house. A pretty small hole at that, for the monster – no, no, the _being_ , if not a person yet, not just yet – though not for himself. There was no window there, only one door with ventilation holes above it. The bed platform filled the entirety of the back wall, blocked off from the main area by a huge but empty table, on which sat a huge but empty leather pack and a huge but empty stone bowl. A bundle of old leather lay neatly by one rough-hewn table leg, and, as he peeked in, inside it lay his Asgardian paraphernalia.

"Do not let anybody see those, little one," his helper – taller than him by at least four feet, and he _refused_ to see others of their features – whispered. They were no longer weeping softly, but their voice had not yet recovered. Their Allspeak was stiff, slow and heavily accented, heightening the feelings of surreality and displacement that hit him as soon as this alien grief for an alien being had subsided a little.

"You know… who I am?" he croaked back, his voice soft, even as he held the bundle close to his chest. His eyes were determinately focused on an open stone chest parked by the opposite table leg, containing what seemed like more leather.

"You are a lost child," came the answer, sad and sympathetic. "That is all we need to know. You were here just after half of the land had been torn up. You are a gift for us."

"I am not a _thing_ , nor a child," he hissed, with just a quarter of the heat that usually filled his voice, and none of it in his intention. Echoes of war and monsters came back, now accompanied by a more recent, clearer concept of "war trophy;" and, again, he fled from their sinister caresses.

Literally so, as he scrambled to under the table and tried to peek into the stone chest. He _needed_ clothes, anyway, if he was not allowed to look the least bit Asgardian in this place that he refused to name. He had only been wearing a makeshift-looking loincloth made from some thick, rough fabric all this time, and it made him feel naked – even more naked than the present condition of his mind and emotions suggested.

A weak, tired chuckle came from behind him, as a pair of hands helped him plop into the chest. "I did not say that you are a thing, little one. Gifts are not always items; and in any case, it was your presence that we considered. You have given us hope," they said quietly, with such an amount of sincerity and earnestness that golden hair and blue eyes briefly flashed in his mind. "My grandparent and a few others found you on the snow at the edge of the crater, when they returned from a hunt-and-forage. It was as if you had fallen from the sky, Ymir's way to show that we still… live, that we have a future, even though those stinking pigs tried to kill us without any provocation. No little one was born from the end of the war to about five hundred years after that, at least here, and yet here you are."

Offence and anger warred with shame and bitterness and a smidgen of dark, ironic humour in his mind. He hunched in on himself amidst the sea of neatly folded giant, old leather and cloth paraphernalia, paralysed by his own mind and the lingering scent that he had so briefly but so intensely known quite recently.

` _They did not know that the attack was committed by just_ _ **one**_ _Asgardian; the uninvited guest they have been sheltering, in fact._

` _A very, very poor substitute for your life, old giant. You should have just abandoned me in the cold, like my birth father did, and let the realm claim me like it should have all those centuries ago._ `

The same pair of hands fished his frozen body out, at length. "I apologise, little one," the owner of the hands murmured, still as sincerely as before. "We must not be here overlong. It is dangerous. Scavangers will come soon. We must seek help in Tora; shelter, if possible, if not a permanent place there." Their voice faltered for half a moment, but forged on right after, "Come. The others are waiting outside."

"The others," he parroted dully, from his place seated sprawled and listless on the rough stone floor. ` _More monsters. – Monsters like_ _ **me**_ _?_ `

"The others," the… being… agreed. Their voice hitched and shook again, but, _again_ , they forged on, as their equally shaking hands sorted out the clothes and other things that the chest contained. "The elders sacrificed themselves for us, the children, including my grandparent, from whom you and I nursed. We must honour them by living. We cannot continue to live here, however, so we must seek shelter elsewhere. The elders never returned with anything to eat these days, and our runners to the other settlements never came back, either. The wilds are barren. The æsir destroying light scared the animals away, and the storms that came after it buried all the plants in too much snow and ice. It burnt our farms beforehand, so we truly have nothing here, and not even some little hope left." A rattling inhale of breath, then they muttered as if to themself, with grim, unshakeable determination that bordered on mad desperation, "I am the eldest among us, and the most trained. I shall lead all of you to Tora to my best ability, even if I shall perish in the effort. Do not fret, little one; you will live."

Loki felt sick. A memory of a gentle giant's bony frame crowded his mind, pressing against his skin with remembered coolness that was warmth, filling his nose with the scent of cold plantlife and brisk tundra winds.

` _"You will live."_ `

The text and subtext were clear.

` _"I may not live, if you do. I have accepted it. It is all right, for me."_ `

Who was the monster?

There were three sets of clothes in his size buried deep in the stone chest. His helper was startled and aggrieved anew by the sight of those rough old leathers, furs and fabrics, just a little finer than the rest of the garments. "I nearly forgot these," they breathed. "These were from my grandparent's best set of clothes, little one; the attire was their dress uniform from their military days. They cut it up and resized it for you, after sparing one for me. Keep these well. Wear these with pride and honour in Tora, but not on the road. We must avoid tempting desperate adults along the way."

Numbly, Loki put those clothes together with his Asgardian attire in his bundle, then watched as his helper hacked and sewed together a much rougher and much more concealing attire for him from one of the remaining garments. Along the way, three sets of surprisingly soft and light footsteps entered the dark, humble dwelling, so he scrambled up the side of the stone chest and plopped back into it, shaking with trepedation and an unknown emotion that he did not know – _refused to know_.

The voices of the newcomers were equally light and clear, just like his was, and his helper to a great extent. However, _he could not understand what they were saying_. What was wrong with the Allspeak? It was still there! He and his helper had been using it all this time! The owner of the gravelly voice had even used it with him before… before….

He gritted his teeth together and clenched his fists, breathing hard, swallowing back his emotions.

The owners of the three new voices were Derek, Đorkyn and Avlar. They stood just a little taller than he was, a foot or two at most. All were blue-skinned, red-eyed, with markings peeking on the little patches of skin that did not manage to be thoroughly concealed in old leathers, rough fabrics and forlorn-looking furs, which were along their black-clawed toes, black-clawed fingers and craggy faces.

Monsters.

But was he, _himself_ , not a monster? A greater monster than they were, even.

Their only fault was most likely just _existing_.

His fault….

His _faults_ ….

They saw it, together, as they filed out of the gravelly voice's dwelling for the last time – which was also the first, for him. Ovrekka, his helper and the self-assigned leader of their little band, had garbed themself similarly to the other three, then helped him put his on: clothes that smothered nearly his entire form, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, that smelled _too much_ like… like _that gentle care_. A makeshift pack was on his back, smaller and less filled than the others, occupied by his bundle of keepsakes, a makeshift bedroll, and a smaller bundle of scraps and sewing kit.

There was no scrap of food to be had, let alone to bring along with them. And indeed, upon looking around under the gentle silvery light of the two different-coloured moons above, he found that they seemed to be standing in a gost town of snow-covered little stone dwellings, intact but for the lack of living presence anywhere nearby.

He shivered.

Ovrekka tucked him close to their side, even as they gently tugged him forward, following behind Derek – the third tallest, after Ovrekka and Đorkyn. Interpreting his unease correctly, they murmured just for his ears, "Most of the villagers were caught in the destroying light, little one, but it left most of the houses intact. We had been harvesting what we could in preparation for the storm season, and all hands were needed for such task, even little ones like you, so only few of us were spared after the blast."

Their attention seemed to travel to Đorkyn and Avlar, who had drawn far ahead, then to Derek who seemed to drag on their feet yards away in front. Then, in a quieter voice that he could barely hear, Ovrekka continued, "I and those three, along with a number of elders including Gannha, were saved by happenstance only. I was the designated teacher for the younger children, passing down the knowledge my grandparent, parents and nar had given me since I was very little. Those three were punished for roaming far afield in the wilds by their parents, by attending additional lessons with me and Gannha. The other elders who happened to be home were stowing the food that they had harvested from the fields." They let out a shaky sigh, then finished with, "The elders ate the food, and we nursed from them. Some of them tried to do some hunt-and-forage farther away when the supplies got low, but they either never came back, or returned empty-handed. We tried to stay here as long as we could. We hoped for some help from other villages, or even from Tora and the Capital; we sent Avlar's dam and Derek's parents to run messages there. But nobody came." Their voice broke in the last three words, and Loki's heart gave an unexpected squeeze in response.

He swallowed hard, felt so queasy, so disgusted _with himself_.

And then, near the edge of the ghost town, he witnessed with his own eyes what Ovrekka had told him before.

A crater, indeed: a burnt, jagged deep bowl that seemed to run for at least miles – if not tens of miles – all round, catching not just a few of the little stone dwellings in it, if looking at the remaining stone walls along some of the edges. The sharp, cloying smell of jötun death wafted up from it, a miasma that shook his – no, _this body's_ , just this red-eyed, blue-skinned monstrous body's – instincts up. Snow and ice seemed to shun the place; but, contrarily, remnant tendrals of the Bifrost's energy lingered in and along the edges of the crater, melding seamlessly with the odor, corrupting the land.

He would have relished such a combination, such a destruction.

 _Once_.


	3. Basics, Part 1

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Not even the nature of his own body was familiar to Loki. Would it be surprising, then, that the nature of the land and its customs were utterly baffling? And faced with the double attack, how could a reeling, displaced, most possibly _former_ prince of Asgard react?

3\. Basics, Part 1

Nature still reigned supreme, it seemed, away from the crater, away from the ghost town. Huge mounds of rough snow formed everywhere, and heaps of ice scree likewise. The presence of the latter spooked the three younger – or at least smaller – jötnar, judging from their nervous tones and wide-eyed looks thrown at those dully gleaming piles.

Ovrekka was not safe from a similar worry. They urged their four charges to walk faster, to watch out for signs of a storm in the horizon, and their surroundings for quick shelter should it be needed.

Loki did not know what would constitute as shelter, here. He would have lost his way a long time ago in the first place, if he had not travelled with the… natives. There seemed to be nothing suggesting that they were travelling on a path of any sort, for one, although Ovrekka had informed him that they were going to a neighbouring village, half a day's brisk walk for adults in fair weather. There was no sign of life along the way, no road landmark, no road lines, let alone any hole or overhang that could be used as shelter; only rough snow and ice pellets and spires of rock. The jagged, desolate landscape stretched unbroken until it met the silvery horizon, gleaming white and grey and blue and blue-green.

Too open.

Too raw.

Menacing.

He suppressed a frisson of unease that would have made his body, still tucked close to Ovrekka's side, tremble.

Then again, what should one expect from a land of monsters?

The little band of wandering travellers became tighter in formation as the sky darkened. Loki did not know how long he had been walking. He was yet to learn to tell time or direction by looking at this alien sky.

But, well, he would abandon this wretched place the first chance he got, all the same. The only tie he had here, unwitting as it had been, was dead and abandoned miles away behind in a ghost town. What use would it be, then, learning about anything here?

For a monster, though, Ovrekka was not as bad as what Asgardian stories painted about the jötnar. The constant side-armed embrace, for example. He had long regained steadiness on his feet, and he was used to traversing long stretches of land by foot, but his new – or long-buried? – instincts felt calmer with the close proximity Ovrekka offered so freely and casually, completing the set of things that would empower him through this dreary, hopeless journey – something missing that he had never known as missing before. In fact, up ahead, the three other jötnar had been linking hands and walking closely one to another for some time already, too….

Who knew, monsters could be cuddly to each other.

They walked through the semi darkness, stopping just long enough to relieve themselves. And was that not an embarrassingly novel and squimmish and shocking experience to him in this form! Who knew the jötnar had _two_ sexes in one body – mostly hidden by a thick surface that at first to third glances made him look sexless – and an _additional_ smaller orifice tucked in between both just for urinating? This would explain why his Asgardian skin was so… odd, genitalia-wise, compared to other males.

They halted again not long afterwards to partake of the cleanest snow they could find, which was inside and half-way up one of the largest snowdrifts, when Avlar – the smallest of the three smaller jötnar – complained about being thirsty. If Loki were in his æsir form, the unmelted, unheated snow filling his gut that Ovrekka had just cupped out for him on their hands would have killed him through hypothermia, worsened by the no-doubt frigid outside temperature. But as it was, the outside temperature was just pleasantly cool, and the snow likewise in his belly, and both sensations put into one made it as if he had only done something as mundane as drinking a cup of water in autumn at… _in Asgard_.

Đorkyn grumbled something to Ovrekka as they resumed walking, and that tallest jötun in their company replied in like manner, in the same language that Allspeak oddly did not encompass. No more argument was forthcoming in reply to the curt response, however; instead, the smaller jötun quickly stomped back to the side of their friends.

Loki had been debating with himself about if he should ask Ovrekka on the topic of the untranslatable language, although he was less interested in knowing what they had just argued about with the second tallest in the company. Ovrekka had known about a part of his origin; but had they known – or at least suspected – that he had not just happened to be wearing Asgardian attire when he had fallen into this Norns-forsaken realm? What would they do should he confirm that as undeniable fact? What would he gain from holding his tongue?

Ovrekka had claimed they were _all_ children, even Loki. Were children here apt to killing each other as adults were? Were these… well, _these_ , going to abandon him in this desolate wasteland if not, in place of murder, if or when they found out that he belonged to their worst enemy – the latter's _prince_ , in fact, or maybe former prince by now?

He decided he did not wish to die a forsaken detritus, in the end.

So he chose a milder branch of the problem and asked, "How old am I, in your estimation?"

Ovrekka did not answer for a while, seeming to be deep in thought. And then they mused out their observation, "You look so small and young; but you often behave several times beyond your age. Some of the Kindreds are naturally short,, but you do not bear any of their typical traits. Gannha said some unfortunate people were forced to grow up far beyond their years by unfavourable circumstances…." Their voice broke again on the mention of "Gannha," who most likely had been their grandparent, and also the Elder Vrelkki that they had mentioned only once.

The Elder Vrelkki that had died _for_ him, an _Asgardian_ stranger.

He fell silent as well, fighting for composure.

A brighter, more golden light was beginning to suffuse the horizon above and the landscape below, when they at last halted for a rest. Ovrekka left Loki's side for the first time since their first meeting in that little stone dwelling, scouting out a patch of ground suitable for their camp and icing it over presumably for a more comfortable surface for sleeping.

He strangely felt bereft, abandoned.

He did not even know that he was hugging himself, in an unconscious effort to stave off the surprising and surprisingly strong feeling, not until a much larger body was in his field of sight and a pair of familiar arms surrounded by a growingly familiar scent wound round him in a tight embrace. He squirmed and pushed and jabbed at his hugger, and Ovrekka _chuckled_ at the belated defiance.

"Do not be ashamed of your needs, little one," they chid him gently, as they led him with one arm once more slung round his shoulders to the smooth, shiny patch of ice a small distance away that was already occupied by the three smaller jötnar.

"Needs," he scoffed heatedly, mortified by the very idea.

But what did it say about himself, that he did not mind the ushering arm slung round his shoulders?

Đorkyn remarked as much, in an acidic tone that spoke even more, from their place lounging against the rock formation their campsite was pressed against. Loki bristled, affronted, but the hand squeezing his left shoulder gently halted the onrush of his tongue.

"Behave, Đorkyé. We do not need fights in this journey. It is already hard enough," Ovrekka called out, though sounding more nervy than firm.

"Why we speak this tongue? Stupid language," Đorkyn needled some more, regardless. "Let little learn our language. We never go from here anyway, and no kind stranger come. Allspeak no use."

"It is still a good skill to be had," Ovrekka retorted. "And it is wrong. People still go out of Ymir's reach, at times."

"And they never come back," Avlar bit out bitterly, as if mocking the Allspeak by the mastery and use of it, from their place curled up on the farthest corner of the newly formed ice sheet. "Other realms are full of monsters. And they call us monsters."

"Your sire and eldest kin-sibling were an exception, Ava, and they did not follow the protocol for such excursion," Ovrekka parried tiredly. "Gannha had spoken about it with you and Ranyé and your dam so many times already. Repeating it and assigning blame to other people just deepen the wound, you know that."

The little band's self-assigned leader ended up having to chase after the affronted and hurt Avlar, who fled into the wilderness in high dudgeon, leaving Loki to settle alone on the nearest edge of the ice sheet. Hunger gnawed at his insides, with how much energy he had expended today, but for now he could ignore it. The thought of these monsters calling the inhabitants of the other realms "monsters" would have put him out of his meal, all the same.


	4. Basics, Part 2

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Prejudice, lack of information, culture shock and a smattering of danger mixed so very well. It _worked_ , even against the Silvertongue.

4\. Basics, Part 2

"We should keep rotated watch," Loki ventured out when the golden hue of the sky deepened and reflected rather painfully from some of the icy surface all round them, in addition to warming the place up to the point of drowsiness.

"How you know about rotated watch, little?" Đorkyn, now sans most of their travelling clothes and curled in their bedroll under the ice roof that Ovrekka had just erected, scoffed. "No say thing you not know. Make you look younger your age."

"I am old enough to have _experienced_ it, many times over," Loki bit out. He was still fully wrapped in his travelling attire despite the warmth of the sunlight, with no intention to lie down any time soon, and his attention was stubbornly focused on their environment, skittishly watching out for any bandit or predator or natural disaster in the making.

He only tore his sharp gaze away from the rocks and boulders and jagged stones that populated the area when he sensed horror and disbelief emanating from _all_ his companions. "What?" he bit out again, more unsurely and defensively than he had meant to sound.

"You…?" Avlar, also still in their full attire, although their lower legs had been jammed into their bedroll, gawked. The sentiment was echoed, in varying degrees of disbelief and/or scorn, by the others.

"I am nearly one-thousand-and-three-hundred years old," Loki bristled even fiercer. "I am perfectly capable of many things. Keeping watch and fighting are only some of them."

` _Keeping watch and fighting_ _ **against you**_ _, if need be,_ ` he wanted to add; but Ovrekka looked so tired and distressed already that, somehow, against the order of his mind and æsir habits, his heart baulked on the idea of giving them more stress to try to diffuse.

Still, he had never expected them _all_ to _laugh_ , of all things.

Ovrekka shifted closer and plopped him into the loose cocoon made from their limbs, as if to show how small – how _young_ it seemed – he was compared to them. He tried to wriggle his way out, but got _cuddled_ instead.

"I am two-thousand-one-hundred-and-three years old," they said, with an unmistakable smile in their voice, the deepest and most gravelly of them all. There was a childlike quality in the simple proclamation that made Loki pause from trying to kick, punch, jab and bite at his living cage, highly disturbed.

"I am one-thousand-five-hundred- _and-sixteen_ ," chirped Avlar teasingly. "Still older than you!"

"One-six-nine-five," Derek, the third largest of the travelling companions, stumbled quietly through the Allspeak with a tiny smile in their voice.

"One-thousand-eight-hundred-seven," drawled Đorkyn. "See? You youngest, little. It show anyway."

"Some Kindreds are small, Đorkyé," Ovrekka sighed, as Loki tensed up in their arms. "Our best mages are usually small, too."

"And those who were forced to grow up fast," Avlar piped in, absent of their earlier levity. "Like Ranyé."

"Like Ranyé," Ovrekka agreed sadly. "But Ranyé is with Ymir now, like my gannha. Should Ymir choose to rebirth them, I hope they have much better lives."

"What happened?" Loki failed to contain his innate curiosity, and also the darker drive to gather some intelligence. The information was nno longer new to him, as Ovrekka had explained it to him beforehand, but these comments put it into a different perspective, a more tangible context from which he might be able to base his behaviour on until he could go somewhere else – far, far away.

"Tell us your name first," Avlar stipulated in response – in a bolder voice than the statement warranted, in Loki's opinion. The vulnerability in their red eyes – the only part of them that was readily visible at present – hardened a little into unreadability, as they curled up into a gangly ball with their arms perched across their knees, covering the lower part of their face.

Loki tensed up even more, wary; wondering if his name was common in this place or otherwise and if Laufey had ever announced what the name of the King's runty son would have been, worrying if it would be connected to his Asgardian attire – at least by Ovrekka – and then to the rare bearers of the name "Loki" in Asgard, thinking if he should invent a false name if not a false identity altogether….

"A fair bargain," Ovrekka agreed soothingly, patting Loki's shoulder, as if they could dismiss his tension and the general unease in that way. "We know about the recounting already. Some of our elders were even there directly during that dark time. But you were not there, little one. We do not wish you to be a stranger, but we do not even know your name."

"You did not ask me before," Loki accused weakly, distractedly, even more confused than before; a state of mind that he had rarely been in, and now he found he detested it so much. Feeling uncomfortable with the proximity now, he used Ovrekka's inattention to slip out of their lap and seat himself on the farthest corner away from the rest of their small party.

"It is your choice to introduce yourself or not, is it not," Avlar pointed out impatiently. "Do you not know that? Your maternal jitya has four braided lines, your paternal jitya as well to a great degree, and Ymir's crown-line is on your brow. You are somehow from _royalty_. Elder Vrelkki said so in one of their lessons. And Elder Vrelkki fought alongside the Royal House in _two_ wars. There were even rumours that Rekki's nar looked so much like Konnar Laufey."

Loki's heart thumped madly in his chest. ` _Laufey's son,_ ` his mind shrieked. ` _Suffering. Abandoned. Left to die._ ` And then, ` _If Laufey's other gets ever know that his runty, worthless son is here…._ `

His own damn body was betraying him. Who knew that these barbaric markings had meaning?

If the right people read these meanings correctly….

His breathing sped up. He felt numb, and yet electrified.

When Ovrekka leant forward and reached out a hand, he skittered back and hissed, "Stay away from me!"

"Do not treat Rekki so!" Avlar barked, jumping up to their feet. The other two followed suit.

Loki, now also on his feet, tensed up even further. Ovrekka's entreaties for their charges to settle back down and finish the discussion without blows passed by him like wind, acknowledged but dismissed.

Still, when he next spoke, he chose to address them above all, while keeping the three smaller, incensed jötnar within his peripheral vision. "Did you take me in and include me in this journey only because I am somehow _royalty_ to your eyes?" And damn the new fears that colluded with his resurfacing insecurities, he had _not_ meant his voice to come out so shaky.

He reached into his pocket dimension for an úru dagger and fell into a defensive stance, to compensate for his unconvincing demand.

Đorkyn snapped something at Ovrekka in that untranslatable language, which must be their native tongue, while sneering – showing all their black, sharp teeth – to him. Derek fidgeted, looking with wide-eyed fear at the dagger held competently in his hand. Avlar snarled and bowled their fists.

"Please put the knife away, little one," Ovrekka, the only one still seated on their weird picnic blanket, frankly and desperately begged. "There is no need for that. I do not want you to hurt yourself or the others."

"Hurt _myself_?" Loki sneered, lifting up the dagger as Avlar approached menacingly. "I have been trained in using weapons like this one since I was two hundred years old."

"You lie!" Đorkyn growled, scorn and disbelieve thick in that short declaration.

"Why would I?" Loki retorted. "In…" ` _…in Asgard…_ ` "…in my place we train from that age."

"You would practically still be a _toddler_ , then!" Avlar squawked, offence turning suddenly into horror, fists unravelling. "What barbaric place would do that to such a small child?"

` _Asgard, and it is not as barbaric as Jötunheim is, you_ _ **monsters**_ _!_ ` a part of his mind automatically parried. Nevertheless, for a long, embarrassing moment, he could only open and close his mouth in vain.

"We have different concepts of age," he concluded at last, in his best dismissive tone. "I am one-thousand-two-hundred-and-ninety-four, and I am a perfectly capable warrior in body, mind and experience." He did not put away his dagger, but relaxed his stance a little. "Now, please tell me why you took me in and included me in this journey." He infused his best commanding tone into the demand, in hope that the topic would not be veered away for the second time.

"You are not our parent!" Avlar glared at him.

Loki scowled right back, unimpressed by both the retort and the glare. What was the childish offence of one small monster worth, compared to the furious and disappointed damnation of Odin Allfather? And he had received the latter _so generously given_ since a long, long time ago already.

However, before the situation could spike up again, Ovrekka pushed themself verbally into the stalemate. "Gannha took you in without looking at your jitya," they said firmly, with stubborn conviction so much like Thor's that his much abused heart ached. "We – Gannha and I – only knew when we unwrapped you, to tend to any possible wound you might have. Nobody else knew, until these three saw you before I wrapped you for travel." They took a slow, deep breath, next, and pinned Loki with a disbelieving look more potant than Đorkyn's ever was, nearly rivalling Mother's – no, _Frigga's_ – that he was slightly taken aback.

"Why would we leave you back there, regardless of who you are? How would you live off of _a barren land_? Do you think we would uproot ourselves, if the situation was not dire? People of the fields are not nomadic, usually, as people of the seas and mountains often are. Now, please, little one, for the sake of our unity in this trip if for nothing else, tell us your name?"

` _Damn. A second Frigga,_ ` was all that filled his mind. Then his courtly training snapped back, ironically triggered by that thought, and he schooled his bearing and expression into distant unreadability. His mind, meanwhile, feverishly tried to come up with a fake background for himself, to properly introduce himself with, and tried also to find a way to obscure the markings on his skin without attracting attention.

"I do not remember who and what I was before I fell," would have sufficed, if only he had _not_ claimed that _where he had been_ warriors underwent training since they were two hundred years old.

But, with all the emotions and thoughts and plans jumbled together in his flabbergasted mind, _he could not think of anything else_.

And then, it became a moot point, as Avlar forced themself back into the conversation, insisting, "Now, what is your name? Or shall I call you… ah, how do those stinking pigs say it? Princeling?"

Loki snarled. "For one who seems to revere the royalty, you are one impudent _thing_ ," he snapped, bearing his teeth like the monster his skin was wearing – _like the monster he was_.

"I just followed _tradition_ , and tried to show you a basic respect," Avlar growled back, with acid scorn that was usually _Loki's_ purview when he was most wrathful with somebody, and with an unimpressed look that Loki would have applauded in another time and another place. "We have no ties to the nobles, anyway, except for the times when Elder Vrelkki and Rekki's parents worked with them, and those stupid rumours about Rekki's nar. Titles mean nothing to the fields, too. Animals and plants cannot grow by touch of a highborn."

"I never said that!" was the only answer that Loki could come up with, childish as it was, as the sheer _impudence_ of the little monster floored him. His gift of eloquence failed him thoroughly, for once.

In Asgard, no commoner would have dared to behave thus. They would have spoken and spread gossip behind the nobles' backs and underneath their lofty attention, but they would _never_ have spat right on the said nobles' faces.

This was… refreshing, but also troubling for his all-too-pressing predicament.

 _Just_ more trouble, on top of a heap of them.

He shook his head, then tossed his dagger back into his pocket dimension. "Just tell me," he said at length, suddenly feeling tired and fed up with _everything_. "Why are we not in Tora yet? Or at least the next village? You will not have to see me ever again, then."

"The next village is a half day's worth of brisk walk _for an adult_ , little one," Ovrekka said reasonably, while patting the patch of ice beside them in clear invitation. "We are neither adults nor in prime condition for any brisk walking. We may reach it by tomorrow afternoon, if nothing hinders us. As for leaving us, who are you going to live with, then?"

"Nobody," was his immediate comeback. Frustration converged with confusion, and it was all that he could do to stay put, standing at the edge of their odd campsite. "I told you all. I can take care of myself. I have many skills. I can work." Not that he would need to work in the long term, as he would sneak away the first chance he got, maybe to Midgard or Nornheim – places that Asgard either looked down on or was not so friendly with.

"You are still _far_ under three thousand," Avlar scoffed, with hands all a-milling. "I would like to work, too, _if I could_. But I am only half the way there. Not even Rekki is of age yet for small and simple works, or so I heard. Two-thousand-five-hundred is the norm, people say, in cities like Tora."

Loki threw a deadpan frown at the seated, long-suffering Ovrekka. "You said… everyone back there…."

"City and village lives are two different things, little one," Ovrekka frowned back at him. "Surely you know that? We need… _needed_ … all hands that could help, out in the fields." Their craggy face – craggier than those of the others – crumpled up further, yet again, and their effort to regain their equilibrium was painful to watch.

"Call me Loki," he said, instead of responding to the remark, ungracefully and quite abruptly changing the topic, before Ovrekka could wallow more in their misery,

Or else, ask uncomfortable questions _and_ think uncomfortable thoughts.

He really, truly needed a believable background soon, especially with his name being out in the open like this.

And regarding the information he had just received…. If these weird monsters, hiding their savagery under a veil of childishness and civilisation, wanted to treat him like a little child, then maybe…

…He could strike at them from new, creative angles, all the bitterer for the monsters for that, as a parting gift before he was gone forever from this harsh, pitiful realm.


	5. Basics, Part 3

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Family is a sharp, beautiful irony.

5\. Basics, Part 3

When what Loki would have called "day" in Asgard deepend, he warded their campsite using his seiðr, just as Ovrekka created walls with high openings to complete their ice roof, to better conceal them from unkind eyes. He was actually _impressed_ with the truly house-like shape that Ovrekka had built in such a short time. A thing of beauty and civilisation, built by a monster….

The trio of smaller jötnar were in turn impressed with his seiðr, _and showed off their_ _ **own**_ _seiðr_ afterwards. It made him wonder if all frost giants were capable of using seiðr, and thus his misplacement on Asgard had been visible right from the start, if only he had known what and where to look.

His feats of magic seemed to somewhat endear him to the smaller frost giants, all the same, although Ovrekka passed him by with just a pat on one shoulder and an assured, "Gannha already suspected that you have a good grasp on seiðr, Lokyé. – Or do you wish me to call you Lokka instead? – But do not tax yourself. The journey before us is still far."

"Do you… still wish to know?" Avlar offered suddenly, tentatively, as they stuffed themself into their bedroll fully at last, sans most of their clothes.

"If you would tell me," Loki agreed noncommittally from the opposite corner of their temporary… house, but did not acknowledge any of Ovrekka's praise, admonishment or offer to – presumably – give him a diminutive in the unknown language of monsters they seemed to speak in. He was now seated leaning against the smooth ice wall Ovrekka had just erected, perched on his still bundled bedroll.

The littlest monster – aside from Loki _himself_ – stirred uneasily in their bedroll, then finally sat up and cleared their throat, sounding like the crashing of ice crystals. "Ranyé…. They…," they began, stuttering, then windmilled their hands impatiently like a pouting child indeed. Focusing their gaze on the window-like long but narrow opening set beneath the roof of their shelter, they plodded on after a few more false starts, "Rannar, whom everyone called Ranyé, was one-thousand-four-hundred-and-fifty, when Asgard came to Ymir's land. I was two-hundred-and-twenty-two. A group of æsir pigs wandered into our village, or maybe they did branch out there from the frontlines of the war, and… well, I did not remember much from that day, and I was always thankful about it, but Ranyé _remembered_." They drew a rattling breath, sounding much like the avalanche of the last ice scree heap Loki had poked out of boredom on the way here. "Our parents and my elder kin-sibling were fighting with the other villagers. Ranyé hid me with their ice. I was too frightened to form my own and maintain it. They stood beside me. They could not use their ice well while they were still shielding me, but they _tried_. An ás was about to club me. Maybe it thought I was an ice rock, or it indeed wanted to bash a toddler into pieces. But Ranyé went forth and stabbed it on the middle. I could not remember much from that moment on, just cries from the pigs and from Ranyé. I was crying, myself. I could not help it."

They were silent for such a long time afterwards that Loki thought the gruesome, most possibly propaganda-riddled tale had ended; but then they said quietly, barely audible to his ears, "Ranyé made themself big and killed five of the pigs. They were crying all the while, Elder Vrelkki said. Elder Vrelkki aided Ranyé and helped me back home, even as they tried to defend Rekki at the same time; Elder Vrelkki, I mean, because Rekki's parents were out on the frontlines with the Royal Family and therefore could not do it. Ranyé was never the same after that, in body and in spirit. They returned to their original size and trained their ice for fighting and shielding. Then they went to Útgarð when they were two-thousand, to enlist with the army. They made themself big again, but it stopped half-way because there was too little seiðr in the land to power the shift, after the Anchor had been stolen, so they planned to lie that they were already three-thousand and came from some mountain or sea, with the smaller peoples. They were sent back home with the Monarch's decree to guard our village, though, instead of being incorporated in the main armed forces like they had hoped. They lost their additional bulk for lack of will, after that, and never regained it because their seiðr had been strained too much and too often earlier. Until a moon-turn and a half ago, when the destroying light came down, Ranyé was never taller than I am despite their age. They were never a child, either, after killing those pigs. You remind me of them, in part."

Loki could not _think_ , let alone say anything to that.

Avlar did not seem to expect any response from him, all the same. Weeping quietly, perhaps remembering their lost family afresh, they curled up fully inside their bedroll, which was in turn picked up and rocked about by a solemn and silent Ovrekka.

When Loki tore his gaze away from the surprisingly, starkly _sentient_ , gentle tableau, he found that the two other jötnar had already burrowed into their own bedrolls long beforehand, with their clothes strewn rather haphazardly beside their respective cocoons.

It was as if those two had desperately wanted to escape the tale without fleeing their shelter, but had not sought to prevent Avlar from telling it.

From _completing their bargain_.

A little child still, if the information these monsters had given him so far had any merit, _and they had completed the –_ _ **hard, unbalanced**_ _– bargain they had struck_.

Brokkr, the so-called best dwarven smith in all Nedavellir, ought to have learnt from this child monster, regarding honour in business deals.

A memory of Odin's utter wrath, on finding his second son – no, no, _his stolen child monster_ – tied up in a ventilated box like an exotic pet, delivered through various places before reaching Asgard, with a magical thread sewing the young lips shut, sent him spiralling into a feeling of homesickness so strong that it choked him up.

` _I have no home. I have no family._ ` The litany repeated again and again and again and again and again in his mind, but to no avail.

` _I failed at everything. I still do._ `

And the dam burst.


	6. Vindicated, Part 1

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Who knew, being proven right could leave so bitter a taste.

6\. Vindicated, Part 1

Loki did not sleep. Hence, he was fully aware of the occurrence when a shady group of figures stole past the rock formations nearby amidst the nearly overbright light of the land's "night" cycle, all too close to the campsite. He held his breath, added an extra silencing spell on himself and his companions, and prayed that the defensive and concealing wards he had put round the little ice house would hold.

They did.

The camp was safe, for the moment.

And then, reality crashed into him with the weight of a rampaging bilgesnipe.

` _I have just saved the lives of_ _ **monsters**_ _. What did I think?_ `

His eyes roamed the four battered, mostly makeshift bedrolls of varying sizes laid on the ice floor. Nothing suggesting who – or even _what_ – their occupants were was there to see. It was as if he was just going on a camping trip with four particularly tall Asgardians, or four shorter ones who for some reason stuffed their belongings in addition to themselves into their bedrolls, therefore making those longer. It would fit, even, if he imagined that those bedrolls somehow contained Thor and the Warriors Three in their rare all-male camping trip. A touch of home in an alien place, as it were.

` _But Asgard is not home. Nowhere is home. I am Loki of nowhere and nobody's son. I am in the company of monsters, and I am a monster myself._ `

As much as he liked to lie to people at times, especially when they had been too nosy regarding his private affairs, he was never one to lie to himself.

` _I am a monster. Maybe, I do belong with them._ `

The black claw-like nails poking out of the finger and toe holes of his gloves and foot wraps confirmed it, and so did the azure of his visible skin, marred with white marks that somehow did not have the feel and texture of old scars.

"Ovrekka, they are not going to allow us into their village," Loki insisted as, just when the golden light of yet another "night" began to encroach on the horizon, their tired, heart-sick, starving little band finally approached some sign of… well, _civilisation_ , or maybe the remnants of one, given how debris littered the outside of that _huge_ blue-grey wall.

"They will! We are children," came the reply, so obviously trying too much to be firm and reassuring that Loki grimaced to himself. ` _Blatant bravado destroys one's will faster and harder than cowardice, do you not know that? And you call yourself our leader…._ `

"Storm," Derek piped in quietly from up ahead, as they looked up and shaded their eyes with one hand. "East. Shelter. Must."

Ovrekka tensed up. Loki sighed. It was fortunate that the two of them were once more the rearguards of their little, pitiful procession. Ovrekka might be the oldest of them all in age and body, but not in mind it seemed, or in experience, despite that jötun's claim of the most training. If the others saw them being fearful….

What of it, though? Why would he care about any of them, _even himself_? He had intended to end his own existence, had he not, when he had let go of Gungnir down the broken Bifrost bridge?

Still, he took over guard planning as Ovrekka stepped forward and gave a few strong knocks at the faint outline of a door among the expanse of ice. Avral was to his left, Derek to his right, and Đorkyn behind him. All faced different directions and scanned the surroundings for possible dangers, while Loki himself watched Ovrekka's back.

These were just companions in the journey, he told himself, and they would soon part ways in Tora, wherever it was, if the land was willing to let them pass. He could always dispose of them after the goal had been achieved, if necessary, especially to protect his identity.

After all, he was a monster, was he not?

But the monster that cracked open the door on the wall was at least _twice_ as high and wide as Ovrekka, _and they lifted up a huge spiked ice club as if about to strike_ ,

While Ovrekka was entirely _unarmed_ and _unshielded_.

His ticket to salvation and escape from this wretched place, he told himself. Seiðr pooled surreptitiously in his hands, ready to be flung ahead.

Apparently, there was a figuratively bigger monster than he was, out here, not only in the literal sense.

The apparent doorkeeper with the spiked ice club had not landed a blow. The things they bellowed in these monsters' untranslatable native language at Ovrekka, then at the rest of the tiny congregation yards away behind the much smaller monster, _those_ were blow enough, Loki saw.

Ovrekka returned to their little group stumbling blindly through the debris.

"They didn't believe me! Why wouldn't they believe me?" they jibbered almost to themself, nearly passing by their wide-eyed audience without stopping. "Didn't Elder Rava pass through here before Tora? Didn't these people know about the destroying light anyway? They should've known! The early storms should've been an indication that something was wrong. Why would they accuse us of trying to trick them into letting robbers in there, _too_? They should've just said no _and leave it at that_ if they didn't want to let even _children_ in!"

Loki sent the door that had just boomed shut before him a vicious glare.

There was no pleasure in finding his pessimistic prediction coming true, this time, even though he should have expected it from the land of monsters.

Well, then, before he fled this land, he would _happily_ demolish this village.

The dejected company walked – no, _stumbled_ – all through the night, continuing their way to Tora without the respite Ovrekka had hoped for. With how much time he had spent walking along these paths, Loki had begun to notice some subtle markings of a path to either side of where they hobbled and wobbled onward. Most of the lines and hip-high stone posts were covered thoroughly by mounds of snow and ice pellets, but then again those mounds oftentimes became the new, more visible markings, most probably having been swept aside from the middle of the path by giant feet. Ice debris and patches had previously blurred the borders to him, too, but now no longer.

What did it say, then, to his oath-keeping capability, that he had ended up learning something about this land anyway despite his promise otherwise?

Liesmith, indeed.

When "midnight" came, Loki taught his travelling companions about how to shield their eyes from the sun's reflected glare on the landscape with seiðr. In turn, they taught him about how to form a body-shield from his own ice.

"You should have known how to do this from a long time ago," avlar chastised quietly. "Did your parents not teach you how? Or your dam, at least, if you did not live with your sire?" But they were surprisingly also the most patient and attentive in teaching him, despite the rebuke, and despite his repeated failures and lack of progress, too, so he withheld any kind of return he might have shot back otherwise.

He was too busy being frustrated with his own incompetence, anyhow. Forming his own ice might be a monster's skill, but it was _useful_ ; and if Odin had been correct that he was Laufey's son, this skill should have been as innate to his makeup as his seiðr.

Maybe, this was proof that he was not truly – or at least entirely – the son of the king of ice monsters…?

The storm that Derek had seen earlier hit them well before "day" came, sudden and ferocious. Sharp, icy wind howled and whipped round everywhere, while ice pellets – sometimes even the size of his fist – pelted them mercilessly. Now he knew why they were all wrapped so thoroughly from head to foot, and why the jötnar had always regarded the heaps of ice scree they had encountered with trepedation.

He wished he had still been ignorant.

Listening to Ovrekka and Đorkyn and Derek whining and whimpering in pain, being stoned relentlessly and mercilessly by the hailstorm, it was a torture of its own, although he and Avlar were almost totally safe otherwise, shielded by the backs and interlocked limbs of the bigger bodies all round them.

And then a sharper, fiercer wind came into play, and they were tossed about like rag dolls in the hands of a child in a tantrum, and it was only his belated use of seiðr that saved them from fatal injuries.

The monsters had been right to fear the heaps of ice scree, if those had been brought about by storms similar to this.

He really, truly wished he had not known.

The two moons of this world – one silvery grey, the other silvery brown – were already high in the sky when the storm finally dissipated, bringing the gale with it.

None of the five wretched companions moved for a very, very long time yet, however, interlocked with each other in a big, misshapened ball of scuffed leather and old fur and rough cloth.

And then, unable to help himself anymore, Loki released his hold on Avlar and Ovrekka and flopped into a dead faint, thoroughly spent.

He woke up an indeterminate time later on a stretcher of ice with railing on all sides. It seemed to be carried by the tallest two of the smaller jötnar on their shoulders, judging from the not-so-noticeable imbalance of height between the head and leg ends, and how far the ground seemed to be from where he lay swaying.

"You did not leave me behind," he remarked quietly when, apparently noticing his state of consciousness, the said jötnar – Đorkyn and Derek – rested the stretcher on the debris-strewn ground.

"You are our companion," Avlar, confused and exasperated, said as they helped him up. "It would be a poor gesture of gratitude as well, would it not, if we abandoned you whilst the reason for how you were in that state was because you had helped us through the worst of that storm?"

` _Gratitude and honour, from_ _ **monsters**_ _,_ ` he thought, flabbergasted.

Maybe, he would not dispose of them when it was time for him to flee this land, despite the danger they posed to the leakage of his identity, as a show of his own gratitude for their unlooked-for, _honourable_ assistance….

"How long until we reach Tora, Rekki?" Avlar asked timidly, as they huddled in their temporary ice house when the next "night" came; a far smaller construction than the one Ovrekka had made before, misshapened to boot.

"Amma and Abý and I spent two days on the road before the Anchor was stolen," was the tallest jötun's quiet answer, with eyes firmly nailed on their hands laid on their lap. "We did not have a skiff, but Amma and Abý managed to buy a transport raft from their military salaries. There was an inn and a few houses on the half-way point to Tora, a day's journey from home when we did it."

"I went there again, but this time with Gannha, as my begetting-day gift – to Tora, I mean, not the half-way village – when I turned two-thousand," they continued after a brief, uneasy pause. "We spent four days walking on the road, and that was because Gannha was carrying me, and they used to be a soldier on a long march."

"We dead before there, then," Đorkyn predicted darkly.

Ovrekka just clenched their fists, with a soft hiccup whispering deep in their throat.

"But we have to _try_ , still, do we not?" Avlar interjected hastily, desperately. "ymir be kind, we will reach Tora soon."

"Spirit, not body, maybe," Đorkyn sneered. "Stop dream. Nobody will not pass and help. Nobody like storm. They safe in Tora, comfortable."

Avlar burst into tears, in response, instead of arguing back.

In moments like this, it was hard to refute the assertion that they were _all_ children, Loki thought, withholding the automatic sneer that he had been about to unleash on such a display of weakness.

They might be monstrous children, not at all what people would have called "children," but still children. And they were out here alone, battered and starving and hopeless and most likely lost, in the company of a murderous, spiteful Asgardian hiding in the guise of their own skin.

What a childhood.


	7. Vindicated, Part 2

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: An argument. An heirloom. A parting. – Horror. Pain. Fury. Only _after_. – Hindsight is twenty-twenty, always.

7\. Vindicated, Part 2

"Caravan," Derek suddenly said during the fourth day of their trek away from the walled village, as they crested a hill that was, according to Ovrekka, the _quarter_ -way point of their journey instead of pretty close to Tora already. Loki had spent the journey so far learning about the jötnar's native tongue, especially those related to navigation and things that they might find on the road, intersperced with trying to survive several more – thankfully smaller – hailstorms. He had given up on trying not to learn anything about this broken realm, figuring that some knowledge of it would indeed be vital for his survival. It paid off now, as the ever-silent, keen-eyed Derek declared their observation in that very language.

"We wait," he interjected in the same tongue, before anybody else could utter the horrible idea of approaching the said caravan for help or, Norns forbid, _just run there without any plan_.

And still, he had to grab hold of Đorkyn's braided leather belt, to prevent them from just charging down the hill and catching up with the speck of dark figure down below.

"We wait," he insisted. But the tallest of the three smaller jötnar just snarled and shoved him away, with such force that his much weakened body spilt onto the ragged surface of the road.

"Đorkyé!" Avlar squawked, protesting, even as they helped a shocked and incensed Loki up.

"Little children know nothing," Đorkyn scoffed in the Allspeak; although, contrary to the sharpness of his shove, there was little heat to be found in his tired words.

"You are not much older than we are," Avlar pointed out, growling.

"Old enough to know more," Đorkyn jibed back.

Loki squeezed Avlar's hand before they could utter any more responding retort. He himself longed to flay Đorkyn alive with his tongue, far sharper and more skilled and more experienced than Avlar's ever was; he knew a dead-end argument when he heard and saw it, though, and he was too exhausted – too fed up with _everything_ – to bother with arguing with _a child_ , all the same. "We wait," he aimed his imploring words at Ovrekka instead, back in Ymska. – If they would not accept any advice, let alone command, maybe they would be softened by some begging in their own tongue?

But Ovrekka, bowed down by the weight of leadership that they were not prepared for – or so he assumed – and maybe also fed up with everything, agreed with Đorkyn.

"I am the oldest," they cut in, when Loki then tried to argue his point in Allspeak.

` _"Know your place, brother."_ `

He shut up.

But Ovrekka was not his brother, nor was Thor his brother any longer given that painful revellation months ago.

He followed nobody.

He was really, really tired of arguing, too, for once. ` _Monsters do what monsters do,_ ` his mind supplied, staying his tongue further from pointing out that he had been right before, about that walled village that had rejected them.

"Go, then," he conceded. "Just give me a map or at least some direction to follow to reach Tora. I shall go by myself."

Ovrekka hesitated, but then halted and reached into their pack. "The Anchor powered most of our devises," they said quietly, wistfully. "However, one can operate this one without much trouble if one has great and fine enough grasp of seiðr. Gannha said your grasp of seiðr was exceptional, far beyond your age, when they tested the layers and latticework of spells surrounding you even when you were deeply unconscious, so I am entrusting this to you. Býkonnar Angrboða gifted this to Gannha after the War with Malekith's people. It was one of Gannha's most prized possessions. Please do not lose it… or your life. I would like to see both of you safe, in Tora."

The aforementioned devise was a thick, bluish transparent crystal disk with ridged circumference. An unbroken line of tiny, unfamiliar, darkened runes, all different from each neighbouring etching, ran along the inner circumference like an exotic, delicate calligraphic decoration. It looked rather small, laid on Ovrekka's palm, and Loki had no doubt that it would be coin-sized to a full-grown jötun, or at least close to that.

"This devise has many uses. Gannha said some called it Ymir's coin, because of its ties to the Anchor and thus to Ymir themself, and the fact that it has less potancy when used outside of Ymir's reach. The proper name is simply 'beacon', since it basically sucks energies and redistributes them for various purposes, and sensitive people usually know when it is activated, let alone when it is being used."

"Quick, Rekki," Đorkyn interjected impatiently in Ymska. The sharp-voiced reasoning that came next sounded just like babbling to Loki's limited knowledge of this language, save for the word "caravan" and something that might be "went", but the meaning was clear even without a good grasp on the admitedly – _shockingly_ – smooth-flowing, almost lilting tongue.

He sent the belligerent jötun a glare.

Đorkyn returned it two-fold, with disgust as a side-dish.

"We will talk more, in Tora," it was Ovrekka who cut back in – in Allspeak – instead of Loki, as if trying to wrestle back control of the swiftly unravelling conversation and civility between them all. Then, resolutely turning their attention back to Loki and the… beacon… still laid outstretched on their palm, they continued, "Ask the elders in Tora to teach you more Ymska. These runes are written Ymska, but of the sort that is mostly used for enchantments and road signs… when the roads were still well taken care of, that is." They let out a weary sigh, sinking into wistful contemplation, then plodded on after an eager-eyed Avlar poked at their side, seeming thirsty for more of the apparently new information, "Send a small tendral of seiðr into the rune or runes you wish to activate, but _do not_ overflow it. If you wish to find a sharper result, up the flow _slowly_. Greater power does not mean greater result, here; finer, continuous and well-paced supply is much better and safe."

They regarded Loki sharply for a moment, then resumed the explanation with more details after he had nodded his understanding and assent, "This rune, the one that resembles the outline of a ball with a big dot on the middle, will tell your mind of where the nearest settlement is… or settlements, for that matter. If you feed it exact thoughts of where you wish to go – or at least the name of the place that its inhabitants might call it by – and at the same time link it to this rune," they indicated the adjacent rune, shaped vaguely like the Aldska rune for 'ch', "it will lead you to that place through a mental trail and provide you a limited knowledge of what lies between you and that place. If you activate these two and the one at the opposite side, the square one with two diagonal lines intersecting each other on the middle, you will have the illusion of the map outside your head instead, though Gannha said it's imperfect, unlike the real map the mages built."

They fell into a heavy silence, like they had been doing whenever deeper thoughts of their grandparent surfaced; but, again like all those times, they shook themself free of the reminiscence soon enough. "This," they soldiered on with a sigh, while shaking the beacon a little for emphasis, "is an all-purpose travelling beacon, meant for personal use, so it is small and rather simple; but it still has many uses, and activating the right combination of runes on it can help you nearly as much as if you use the more advanced versions. You can ask me or the elders for more information when you reach Tora." Their gaze and expression turned stern and deadly serious, then, even more than before, and Loki unconsciously straightened up into the pose a soldier would adopt at attention.

"I told you that this is a priceless heirloom," they said in a quieter voice, sad and solemn, like a child forced to mature beyond their years and comprehend things a child should be yet ignorant of. Their eyes met Loki's and held him still, and for once he did not seek to turn away from such a monstrous eye colour, surrounded by ridged bone sockets. "If you are between life and death, still, use it," they continued at length. "Overflow the beacon with your seiðr, activate all the runes, and throw it where you want it to go, _quickly_. The explosion will kill the danger or dangers, but please have care that you are not caught in it. People used this tactic during the wars, when they were in desperate situations, but they said unwary and unskilled use of this last resort resulted in far more problems than it was worth."

Avlar and Derek winced. Đorkyn scoffed disbelievingly.

Loki, meanwhile, somehow had to bite back the well-drilled instinct to salute and say, "Yes, sir!"

Ovrekka talked some more about the more practical things about the beacon, let Loki have a guided test drive on operating it, then let him stow it away in his pocket dimension.

He could not bare looking at its lit inside too much.

Because, when initially activated, and more when any of the runes got prodded by his seiðr and intention, the centre of the beacon lit up with an eerie, sharply beautiful maelstrom of blue and white and the shades in between.

Too much like the Casket of Ancient Winters, that _other_ thing that Odin had taken away from Jötunheim those centuries ago.

"I will stay, keep Lokyé company," Avlar said at length, when Ovrekka began to move away, following Đorkyn's lead. "Lokyé seems new here, somehow. It will be suicide if they go alone." They looked faintly bewildered, but also determined.

His pride stung a little, Loki stirred from his dark thoughts and waved away the intention. "I can take care of myself," he insisted, for the umpteenth time already since days ago. For supposed children, these monsters did like to baby him somehow, and that had become tiresome right from the start.

Just like in the previous instances, however, nobody heeded him. Derek even decided to tag along. "Shield," was all they said in their seemingly limited grasp of Allspeak, and the dirty, scraggly tangle of Loki's hair stood on end hearing that solemn pronouncement.

"You do not have to go with me. I do not trust that caravan you spoke of, but perhaps it is caused just by my paranoia and lack of understanding about aspects of this current situation," he insisted, with an unknown dread of an impending _something_ pooling on the bottom of his empty, shrivelled stomach.

The quietest of the jötnar gave him a small, non-tooth-bearing smile, and waved a hand in what he had surmised by now as being a shruggy gesture for these… _beings_.

Đorkyn called impatiently from up ahead, so the matter was quickly driven from Loki's mind by irritation and an ever-piling dislike for _that_ jötun. "Go, and keep these concealed somewhere in your person," he said curtly to Ovrekka, while retrieving a couple of emerald disk beads from his pocket dimension, activating their tracking and mapping capabilities, and thrusting them into the latter's hand. "Give one to that _oaf_ , if you want, and ask… them… to do the same. I shall be able to track you using these, if no ward beyond their strength is present and if you do not lose them."

"Talented, indeed," Ovrekka smiled admiringly, with aching wistfulness that he – astonishingly, disturbingly – shared. "Gannha would have been so delighted to teach you alongside me… if only we lived in happier times."

` _If only. If only. Well, if only I were dead and_ _ **that one**_ _were alive…._ `

"Just go," he said, with some roughness caught in his throat, as he pushed the tallest jötun towards Đorkyn's direction. "Say nothing about the three of us. We are going to follow you in concealment as well as we can. We might be able to conduct a rescue mission should it be required if – and only _if_ – they knew nothing about our presence. We are too small, too few and too exhausted to manage a frontal assault."

"This is not a military operation, Lokyé," Ovrekka threw back over their shoulder, even as they jogged to catch up with Đorkyn.

"Tell me that it is not," Loki muttered somewhat resentfully as he wove a mobile ward for invisibility and distraction round himself and his two remaining companions. "Children."

"Well, you are one, yourself," Avlar quipped, maybe in an effort to lighten up the gloomy atmosphere that was permeating this splintered group of theirs.

"I am not," he retorted, treading the same tired argument that was on par with the questions about his survival skills. "Now, all of… you," ` _No, no, not_ _ **us**_ _. I am not_ _ **you**_ _. I am a monster, but I may be more monstrous than you are._ ` "have seiðr of your own, and I saw for myself that you have a rather good grasp on it. I want you to reach out to this ward I am placing around us and feed it whenever it starts to unravel. The work of three people–" ` _Ha!_ _ **People**_ _! Well, are you a person? Am I a person? Are_ _ **we**_ _not monsters that Asgardians use to scare children into behaving?_ ` "–should retain the strength and durability of the ward beyond expectancy."

They _needed_ this, his gut instinct said, regardless of what he might otherwise think about these jötnar and himself. He did not trust strangers easily, and the appearance of a lone caravan on this desolate road, in an earlier-than-predicted vicious storm season, was suspicious indeed.

He only relaxed, a little, when Avlar and derek had clumsily connected to the ward and begun to feed it with trickles of their own seiðr.

He had no doubt the ward would collapse long before it was due, given their sharply flagging strength; but at least it was _something_.

His shoulders slumped further with relief when mental impressions of Ovrekka and Đorkyn popped up on the back of his mind–

–And tensed back up, worse than before, when he noticed the chaotic mess of shock and horror and fear and betrayal emanating from that pair of impressions not long after, when he had begun to lead his reduced company along the interrupted journey.

` _SLAVERS!_ ` rang loudly in his mind, so loud and messy that he did not know who had screamed it. One of the impressions flared, then, before dropping away and unfolding into a mental map of a trolley or wagon of some kind.

An enclosed, dirty one, with _chains_ all over its surface, _wrapping round Ovrekka and Đorkyn_.

Slavers, indeed. He should not have been so shocked. This was the land of _monsters_ , after all. It would make sense if slavery was rampant, with monsters preying on their own kin, even – or rather, _especially_ – on the children.

But he was shocked, there was no denying it.

Shocked and _angry_ , helplessly furious.

And horrified, and dearly wished to just storm the slavers and make them _pay_ …, somehow.


	8. Hunger

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Sacrifice, like hunger, takes many forms and corresponding tolls. The quietest version is the bitterest, as well.

Warning: Graphic (if semi-implied) violence against a child at the end, separated by three asterisks. Please consider your headspace and taste before proceeding past that marker. The plotline would not be lost even if you did not read that part.

8\. Hunger

The journey seemed unbelievably longer without Đorkyn to snipe at and Ovrekka to walk with, somehow. Loki had not told his companions about the fate of those two, and yet they seemed to drag their feet anyway.

They had never tasted such adversity despite their no-doubt hard living prior to the wild Bifrost energy punching a crater down on their land, he thought, when they bedded for the "night." Neither Avlar nor Derek bothered getting out of their clothes, and none of them used the bedrolls as anything but lumpy pillows to sleep on. None of them tried to erect any kind of ice shelter as well, which further suggested to him that the skill required one to be older and more mature first, or, alternatively, that the person had been honing such skill regularly.

Or that the person had any will and energy to spare, for that matter, if looking at how Avlar and Derek immediately fell into an exhausted sleep almost before their heads touched their makeshift pillows.

Loki himself felt totally wrung out and empty, although not _yet_ to the point of sprawling on the ground to sleep without any care for his surroundings. No meal of any sort had touched his stomach since at least six days ago, after all, and he had spent all that time trudging long distances entirely on foot with the weight of a semi-full pack on his back, battered mercilessly by a handful of storms in the open to boot. He had never gone without sustenance for this long, even in his worst adventures with Thor and that brat's band of idiots. Going anywhere with Volstagg meant a steady supply of food and drinks, and going anywhere with Thor oftentimes meant food put into his mouth first before into… _his_.

He hated hunger and chill nearly above all others, and the combination of both was certainly near the top of his list, next to lack of identity and lack of family; and now, he was experiencing _all of those_. Damn it, he had never even thought that a jötun could feel chilled!

And damn the wind, _too_. It had been blowing hard all evening and he was _fed up_ with it, and the misery it increased in him.

He still could not form any kind of ice yet, except for lightly coating the glove part of his outfit that covered the palm of his hand with it, but he still had some remaining seiðr pooling in his body. So, given the abundance of ice scree nearby, he dragged a few heaps of it using his seiðr to the campsite and arranged them as naturally as he knew it along the circumference of their tiny camp. An illusion laid on top and in between them made it as if there was a hill of ice scree at this very spot, instead of a campsite bordered by smaller heaps of it.

The wind died down somewhat, and so did the chill plus his paranoia of sleeping in open spaces.

He plunked into a fitful slumber right afterwards, without his mind's leave.

Using the beacon was like letting his consciousness be tugged along by a much vaster one and spread out like jam over a slice of bread. It made him feel highly uncomfortable. Still, he could not deny that it was effective in pinpointing his destination and the settlement that lay along the way, the midway-point inn plus housing supports that Ovrekka had mentioned about.

Well, it was horribly, terrifyingly all too far to reach on foot, _all the same_. A hulking twenty-five-feet beast in good health might easily cover the distance in one day or two, but he was perfectly aware that he must be one of the smallest creatures in this realm, a six-feet scrawny thing that he was, _and one that was getting scrawnier by the day_ , and his companions were not far bigger than he was; not to mention, they were all battered from all the storms blowing reputedly unseasonally in the open, exhausted already by heartache and the terribly long trek they had endured, _and starving_.

He dearly, dearly hoped the stories about jötnar being canibals were false, or he would be toast… perhaps literally so.

"Why did you choose this path, Lokyé? There was a perfectly travelable road back there," Avlar whined tiredly as they scrambled over yet another jagged rock formation.

"Fastest route," Loki reasoned weakly. He was starting to regret his decision, now that they had spent half a day scrambling up and down jagged landscape away from the long curve of the road. It was far more tiring than walking on the road itself, not to mention more torturous, given all the sharp stone bumps and needles jabbing and prickling at their skin, bypassing their tattered, thinned clothes. But then, how if Đorkyn and Ovrekka had _talked_ , and the slavers were combing the road even now, searching for the remaining members of their splintered band?

His confidence in his decision as the unspoken leader of their trio was severely tested when "night" approached; a heavy snowfall drenched them, while the midway point was still nearly as far as when they had firstly set out away from the road.

Hungry, chilled, snowed on. It was _perfect_. He _hated_ it all.

His first memory was that of abandonment, hunger, chill, and snow that threatened to bury him alive. He _knew_ now that it was most likely when Odin had taken him away from the temple, which must have leaked in snow from damage in the war, but the knowledge only made him feel more wretched.

He was unwanted by all parties involved.

Worse, Avlar had just declared that they could not go on any longer and immediately plopped down on the least jagged, most protected spot along their way. Derek silently followed suit, forcing Loki to do the same by way of majority votes.

"Let us talk about good things," Avlar begged plaintively next. "I could do with some cuddly stories."

Derek seemed to interpret their statement, spoken in Allspeak, as literal cuddling. Avlar was soon dragged into the taller jötun's arms, rested against Derek's front, while Derek themself rested their back against a more-or-less smooth rock cliff behind them. In turn, Avlar dragged a highly reluctant Loki into their arms, to settle in the same position. "Much better," they proclaimed, then, with their voice still laden with exhaustion but brighter than before.

And, indeed, Loki felt a little better, less alone, less lonely. He had never truly thought jötun biology and psyche might require close tactile comfort, despite prior evidence. The concept of it was as freakishly and outlandishly weird to him as imagining Odin as a jötun toddler being cuddled by a hulkingly huge Laufey. He had thought he had cherished his physical contact with Elder Vrelkki and Ovrekka because of more personal and sentimental reason….

"What is the first memory that you remember, Lokyé?" Avlar said next, and all the good feeling he had gained by this contact vanished as if it had never been there. He stiffened in Avlar's arms and sought to break free, but the taller… boy – maybe? – tightened their arms instead.

"Sorry sorry sorry," the jötun babbled weakly, sounding scared silly. "I thought it was going to be a nice memory! Forgive me? We can talk about other things. Please don't go away."

"One-two-nine-four, Ava," Derek pointed out with what sounded like sad, disappointed admonishment at the shorter jötun.

Avlar _cringed_. "Sorry," they whined plaintively, tightening their arms round Loki. "You must have been born at the end of the war, _or in the middle of it_. So sorry, Lokyé. I shan't ever ask again if you wish it."

Loki gave them a hasty, jerky nod. He wished it very much, yes he _did_.

Desperately _needing_ to attract the other two's attention to another topic entirely, he retrieved a package of jerky that he had always stored in his pocket dimension in case of emergency, alongside many other items. He had not wanted to touch his non-perishable food supplies while still in this realm, in case he would have had a greater need for it later on, and also in case his companions would have asked too much about it and eaten too much of it; however, it seemed, his tolerance of adversity had hit an all-time low that he was not sure he could recover from if not remedied forthwith.

Thankfully, neither Avlar nor Derek asked about where he had gotten the food, nor why he had not shared it with the others beforehand, and neither did they eat beyond a single, measly strip of jerky each from the proffered package.

Loki gave them each an additional strip for their understanding silence.

The brief taste of food only tortured them more without giving them any visible boost of energy, Loki regretably found out when they broke their impromptu camp the next "morning." Still, neither of his companions complained about it, and he was grateful for their silence, again.

They spent yet another "day" scrambling and trudging through rock formations, ice scree, jabby stone pebbles, and snowdrifts at least twice their size. Loki had offered to store their packs in his pocket dimension before they had set out for the day, and now they were all thankful about the less weight and bulk to worry about.

By the "night," Loki reckoned that they were three quarters the way to the midway point… which was so pathetic he could not hold back a physical cringe on thinking about it.

He might die exhausted and starving out here in no-man's land among jagged rocks and ice and snow and maybe other hidden things. Đorkyn had been all too right. They would all die before ever reaching even the midway point.

He shared the last of the jerky in the oilcloth package he had opened yesterday "night" with his two companions, no longer hording it for a "later" that might never come.

Because even the ward for invisibility and distraction that _the three of them_ had kept up had just dissipated, despite the boost of the jerky as sustenance for energy.

Subconscious danger alarms woke Loki up near "dawn." He had forgotten to erect his usual wards round their camp for the "night," and it was doubtful if he could still have done it anyway; but he had shared various adventures with Thor, and most of those adventures had had a certain amount of unexpected danger in their various points, so his instincts had been trained to notice such dangers even without the help of specific wards.

He leapt to his feet at once and roused his companions, shushing them urgently before they could squawk in surprise and protest at the small balls of energy he had made from his seiðr exploding all over them. "Danger," was all he said, in Ymska, and they were already running when the last sound passed his lips.

With mental acuity as degraded by starvation of the physical and mental and emotional kinds, they forgot that running away from _any_ predator would only incite the said predator to chase them down more eagerly.

Loki was sure the scream would haunt him all his life.

 _Derek's_ scream. A child's primal wail, full of horror and terror and desperation – and _agony_ , next, along with the chilling sounds of crunching bones, getting farther behind as the said child had been abandoned without any last look over one's shoulder.

Derek had fallen back _willingly_ , when they had realised they could not possibly outrun whatever chasing them forever. ` _Shield,_ ` was all Loki could think of, harkening back to the quiet jötun's word that time in what felt like ages ago.

It had been a _vow_ , now he realised with sick certainty, as he and Avlar, hand in hand, flew – almost literally – across the landscape that they would have slowly traversed otherwise, using the time and chance that their other companion had paid for them so dearly. The beacon shone livid blue in his other hand, guiding their way and screaming for help in place of their silenced voices.

They fell unconscious together an indeterminate time later, their energy fully spent, before their bodies even hit the ground. The beacond clattered down at the same time, still shining blue for a moment longer before dimming, with no more seiðr fed into it.


	9. Another

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: History repeats itself, for the good as well as the bad. And joy and relief, the twin double-edged swords that they are, can stab so deep….

9\. Another

Consciousness, sluggish and sticky and bitter like ahrro sap in late autumn, brought with itself total disorientation. The only thing that registered to the delirious mind at first, with an ample amount of surprise that it did not recognise the cause of but the aching heart knew all too well, was, ` _I am alive._ `

And then, before knowledge of self could sip in, knowledge of the outside world did it: ` _Light. Warm. crisp. Fragrant. Soft. Sleek. Unfamiliar. Seiðr._ ` Although, still, none of the information made sense. The pieces were all jumbled, whirling and hopping about like busy little bees in spring.

The mind and heart clicked into synchronisation on the ` _seiðr_ ` piece, however, once it plopped in. The knowledge and power were instinctive and bone-deep, soul-deep, removable only by death.

And this person was _not_ dead. Not yet. ` _But why? What happened?_ `

Seiðr – _another's_ seiðr – prodded at the mind. It recoiled, threw up shields, tried to lash out.

` _Déjà vu,_ ` the mind supplied, unnerved. Echoes of recent memories flooded into conscious thought.

The heart fled from it, but the grief the echoes bred enveloped it anyway.

The throat let out a sob, but the mind could not comprehend why.

The humming of a not-so-gravelly voice wormed into the ears as if through deep water. The soft, sleek surface changed into something… comfortable, much more preferable, and sweeping rocking movements soon followed, in time with the tones of the humming, intersperced with playful bounces that jostled him not at all.

It felt heavenly.

The sob died a lonely thing. Instead, what felt like a tiny responding hum built slowly in the throat, sounding a little bit like a long, low coo.

The humming picked up variations, speaking about happy times tinged by known and unknown sorrows, despite the lack of words, and the energetic but graceful movements did likewise. The whole thing felt natural to the bones and flesh and blood, and intimately so to the deepest instincts the self had.

It shielded the mind and soul and heart from the worst, as the memories refused to be denied passage for the last time and broke in.

Just like before.

"Huh. Never thought I would ever become a nurser," came a semi-gravelly, semi-deep-voiced mutter from above, reverberating on the large expanse of muscled chest Loki was pressed against. He was yet too exhausted and heartsick to analyse anything from the words and tone of the stranger, especially after his embarrassing weeping session just now, and his muscled cage somehow felt too _comfortable_ , too cosy to forsake, anyway, so he never even tried.

Instead, his lips were latched round something that he believed and prayed and insisted to himself as _not_ an effing _nipple_ from _someone's_ honest-to-Yggdrasil _breast_ and sucked in the heavenly liquid he had tasted only once before in recallable memory. The thing felt even better now, cooler and truly fluid, sliding swiftly into his gut and bursting outward to rejuvenate his whole self. And better yet, the muscled cage had begun to move again, dancing and prancing gracefully as if to some choreographed piece of music that only the said cage could hear.

Maybe the music from before? Would he hear that again some time soon?

Would this cage ever forget this long, embarrassing episode, when he was once more well and hale?

He decided it did not matter, for the time being, as gentle fingers carded through his hair with infinite care, caressing him from outside even as the heavenly liquid did it from inside.

The body wrapped round him was not as huge – maybe not just yet? – and its form was padded with bulging muscles, if with little to no fat; but still, the experience of being surrounded so warmly and fully by _another living being_ like this was an eerie déjà vu moment that Loki would dearly seek to forget for the pain and useless yearning it gave him. The soft, luxurious furs that formed the bedding underneath him, also one that wrapped his body snugly, did not ground him as much as he had thought it could, too. Instead, somewhat resentfully, he wondered if even just _one_ of these furs had been traded off with food, would it have saved the people in that village?

Would it have saved the Elder Vrelkki that those jötun children seemed to adore so much?

That _he_ himself had owed his survival _and comfort_ to?

Was _this one_ going to leave him as well for a path that he could not follow, when he woke up next time?

A path that he had _failed_ to follow, _twice_?

"Hey, Bump, you are shaking again. I thought you liked it all? What is wrong?" his muscled cage murmured, surprisingly quite soft and gentle for such a fearsome voice in such a large body. "Want more milk? I am yet too tired to be jigging around, though, let alone chanting the Song, so not those, please." One huge hand rubbed up and down his bare back, while the other shifted his head a little.

And what was undoubtably _the cage's nipple_ was shoved into his mouth.

He shied away from the all-too-intimate contact, spitting the nipple out and cringing. He was not a _babe_ to be placated so!

"Hey! You were a greedy little thing all moon-turn! Now you spite my offering? Whatever wrong did I do to you?" the cage groused. "I am your milk factory, you know, as Elder Koðrati is to your little friend. The both of you were high maintenance for quite a while, _especially you, little Bump_ , and I could not handle two at once, so Elder Koðrati helped."

The cage's nose poked at his scalp, as the top of his head was nuzzled into playfully and rather vigorously. "Well, I did not really mind, actually." The admission, mellower but even more sulky, was muffled in his hair. "I got you for myself for _a moon-turn_ , however short it feels to me. I have more than a thousand years to make up for, after all. Maybe I could have you for a few days more yet, at least, before your amma comes storming in?… Or Elder Anga…." They let out a possibly unfaked shudder at the end.

The feeling of horrifying déjà vu dissipated, _fast_ , but terror of another kind hounded Loki, mixed with confusion and a smidgen of intrigue.

This cage, whoever on Yggdrasil the madman was, seemed to mistake him for someone else. The words they were spewing like through a broken tap unnerved him on the surface with their possessif – paedophiliatic? – tendency, but there seemed to be a world of hurt and longing underneath, focused round that person – the "Bump," whoever that one was.

Could he make use of that weakness so freely shown? Could he step into this missed person's shoes convincingly? Just until he was ready to escape to milder, more tolerable realms?

But then, what did he know about the land itself and the monsters that inhabited it? What did he know about _himself_ , even, in this form?

Because, now that the muscled cage was rubbing the nape of his neck up and down and up and down and up and down, while cuddling him closer and humming a thin strand of the wordless song he had secretly adored, he found himself relaxing bonelessly into the cosy hold.

He could not even shy away when the nipple was once again slipped in between his lips, gentler now, and the fingers that coaxed it inside squeezed it a little.

A spurt of the heavenly liquid – that, ages ago, in another land it felt, had been offered to him through small shards of ice by a gentle care in poverty that had asked for nothing in return – filled his mouth, and he swallowed automatically.

And, before he knew it, his body demanded for _more_ , and more and more and more.

The thin, exhausted-sounding humming stopped soon enough, but the rubbing hand on the nape of his neck never did. It was joined by the other one on his back, in fact, in tender, repetitive circular motions that lulled him ever deeper into peaceful contentment, and then into an unplanned slumber. No thought nor worry bothered him.

No dread for the impending prospect of final separation with a gentle care was there either, when he firstly woke up, nor did the peaceful contentment leave him in those initial moments.

And then, clearly, he heard the dug-dug of a giant heart and the rush-rush of a giant pair of lungs, pressed against his ear.

History _did not_ repeat itself fully, _this time_.

"Hey, Bump?" his muscled cage murmured into his other ear after a while. "Is there a reason why you are greeting a perfectly good morning with tears?" But there was neither a suggestion nor a gesture – let alone a command – for him to cease embarrassing himself by crying.

So he did not stop, and his cheeks kept being unexpectedly wet.


	10. Eðlenstr, Part 1

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Trying to appease and appreciate a caretaker went a _huge_ bit too far, at least in Loki's opinion.

10\. Eðlenstr, Part 1

"Who are you?" Loki managed to whisper to his fussy, chattery, touchy-feely… captor? Kidnapper? Helper? _Caretaker_?… in one of his more lucid moments, just as the odd, unusual jötun returned from… somewhere… and proceeded to pick him up from the bed like he would pick up a piece of parchment from his desk. He had never taken the chance to know even a little of _that other one_ right from the source; he was not going to miss this one.

Even if the full awareness of being perched so casually in a _jötun's_ arms like a little child _while both were garbed in almost nothing_ felt highly disconcerting and discomfitting; even if the said jötun was the first ever living, _adult_ frost giant that got physically close to him _while he was fully conscious_ after that orchestrated scene with Laufey in Odin's recovery room; even if the said jötun was twittering to him about names of people – and probably places – that he had no idea whatsoever about, _while trying to shove his face at their –_ _ **her**_ _? – naked chest_ , which were _definitely_ populated with two _nippled_ flattish breasts….

He yelped – denying forever to call it a squeak – on that last part, and pushed away the best that he could, struggling to get free from the muscles wrapped round him while he was at it, which unfortunately tightened in response.

"There is no need to be so rude, you know, Bump. Did your amma not teach you manners?" Glaring grumpily, his suddenly subdued, yet-unnamed captor poked twice in rapid succession at the tip of his nose. "You could always just say so, if you no longer wish to be in my company."

Hurt shimmered blatantly in those big red eyes, and Loki looked away, feeling mystified by the seeming non-sequitur yet guilty all the same. "I spoke the truth!" he tried to defend himself. "I do not even know where this place is." It was unwise, perhaps, to admit to both at once and so bluntly, given his currently quite vulnerable state, but his captor seemed to be having a tongue-loosening effect on him… or maybe he was indeed still too out-of-sorts to manage any interaction with another living being.

"Well, you are in Tora, of course, in my house, and we are currently in my bedroom," the jötun said after a beat of sulky pause, then seated… themself? Herself?… on the edge of the bed, while still stubbornly clinging to Loki and trying to get him to nurse like a baby. "Some people found you and your little friend near the midway point to Aglasý one and a half moon-turns ago, checked the beacon that lay near your hand, which was what had called them there, found your mark in the record of its last use, and figured where you were going in the same manner. They delivered the both of you and the beacon to the healers here within the next day…. Well, Ymir loves you still; you were quite battered but _alive_ and not hurt permanently. – Were you sneaking away to visit with Gannha Ekki and their folks in Aglasý then come to visit us here? Ava is from one of the villages there, no? But… _on foot_? Bad move, you know. Storm season is coming early, somehow, after that odd earthquake, and the wilderness has not been safe since then… not that it was quite safe before, after the loss of the Anchor. I would hate it if something bad happened to you… despite the fact that your amma did not see it fit to introduce you to the realm, let alone to me…. And where is the other one? I would not put myself in the first-to-know list, after being absent from the rest of your amma's pregnancy and your birth, but… _my name_! Not even my name…." They descended into low-toned mutterings aimed at themself, switching between Allspeak and Ymska seemingly at random.

The loosening of their attention on their hapless captive was thankfully followed by the loosening of their arms round the said captive.

Loki took the chance. He eeled himself down the jötun's lap to the ice-sheeted, pale-yellow floor, then made his wobbly way the best and quietest that he could across the big – even to adult jötun's standard – room. Hopefully, this way, even if he could not escape outside yet, it would be more of a hassle for this clingy, insane, otherwise all-too-chipper frost giant to recapture him.

The new vantage point allowed him more liberty to observe his surroundings, naturally, as the now woebegone jötun was no longer there to try to cuddle him close like a doll or shove their nipple into his mouth.

There was surprisingly little to observe, nevertheless. There was no door to speak of; just a vertically rectangular opening on the centre of the wall opposite the bed, which lay to his right. Other than the bed, whose finely crafted stone frame was coloured pale brown perhaps in imitation of a birch tree, there was only the tall and rather spindly nightstand set directly beside it and its mounds of furs and pillows, coloured a light blush pink. The incongruously delicate-looking thing held what looked like Ovrekka's deactivated beacon, an honest-to-the-Norns huge _wooden_ lidded mug, and nothing else.

The vast room feel achingly empty, furniture-wise.

However, added with the pale-grass-green walls, the chamber almost had a psychedelic effect on the eyes compared to the land's usual colours and colour preferences, making up for the lack.

As headache-inducing as its owner, he thought with reluctant amusement, especially for the jötnar. After all, these colours were no doubt hard – or even impossible – to find in this drab, desolate, almost monochromatic realm; so when they were _all_ put in one room like this….

He looked away from the sight of the jötun – garbed in some soft-looking loincloth died in patterns of white, orange and lavender, glaring at nothing in particular with hurt petulance like a bewildered _child_ in an adult body – and up to the ceiling, trying to conceal a very unwelcome grin…

…And found the said ceiling to be tinged Midgardian-sky blue, complete with painted clouds of every shade from cheerful white to stormy grey, and a ball of yellow-white seiðr hanging on the very centre of the gentle conflogration like a Midgardian sun indeed….

The peculiar, childish, sulky jötun across the field of positively rioting colours stopped muttering to themself and instead sent him a reproachful glare when, unable to entirely help himself, Loki burst into a soft, very brief sputter of snickers. "Do not mock my efforts, little brat. I gathered the paints and coated everything by myself, you know," they… _she_ , perhaps, rather… snapped, full of – maybe unfaked, maybe not – hurt that was just lightly tinged with a bite of anger.

He caught her eye, shook his head, and tried to repress his grin.

In vain.

Giving up, then, and trying to distract her from both the ever-spreading misunderstanding and a possible further attempt to breastfeed him, he said, "Do you have more paint? Or wish to redecorate this place a little?"

After all, something that would aggrevate the greater populace of the frost giants was always a plus, right? This activity that he had in mind was _perfect_ for that, in his current indefencible state: It could occupy his troubled mind and yet-weakened body without straining either parts too much, while being _un_ suspicious to whoever hapless enough to visit, with the bonus of distracting this weird, child-in-adult woman from treating him like a baby.

And, blessed be the Norns, the _abnormal_ , exasperating, amusing, most likely gullible jötun reached into seemingly empty air in response. She came up with a small army of odd tubes big for his size, with the respective colours represented on their bodies, and stoppered with what looked like the blend of a twist mechanism and fine but stiff brush each. "Just squeeze the body – _softly_ , mind you," she chattered in her meandering way. "The paint will seep out and coat the brush. – It's from lef'erk's hair and they are hard to hunt so do not ruin the brush all right? – Do not let the lid open and the brush unwashed after you use each tube; I'll have you squeeze out the oil needed to loosen the dried paint if you get these ruined and mind you it's one _gross_ and boring thing to do! The paint can survive for some time yet when unsealed, but I would rather not chance it… and you would not, either, if you know what is best for you. Tell me and I shall wash the brush after you are done with it, _each_ , _immediately_. – Erm, did your amma ever tell you I like painting, by the way? Just asking…. I couldn't believe it…. – Erh, well, umm, let us just forget that. Very well, here they are."

"Use none of your seiðr" and "Let me know if you need any shape you have drawn to be trimmed" were the only parameters in the project, with the lone caveat of "Do not reject the milk, which I shall give you _right after this_ , even if I have to get Elder Koðrati or somebody else to nurse you; your body cannot digest solids well yet after too long starving" thrown at the end, in the tone of almost an afterthought.

He went wild with the silly project, therefore, despite the proviso, increasingly willingly – and even somewhat happily – assisted by the truly astonishing owner of the paints and the enormous canvas of the bedroom walls.

Falling asleep in the middle of a very simple, very sedate, quite physically _un_ taxing project was one of the most embarrassing things Loki had had to endure to date, he was finding out. One moment he was trying to paint a red deer on the wall on his eye level, with his earnest, increasingly eager, amusing painting assistant always hovering nearby with paints and advice and helpful seiðr and chatter at a ready; next moment he found himself alone, tucked into the bed, still clad in the comfortable, finely woven silky loincloth he had found himself garbed in earlier, but feeling stiflingly hot even with the minimalistic bit of clothing, and there was an ice – or crystal? – plate of… something… on the nightstand, which was otherwise bare of its previous occupants.

The "thing" was a mound of pebble-like ice shards, each the size of his æsir-skin thumbnail, coloured an exotic, pretty silvery – almost pearly – blue-grey.

` _Are these…?_ `

He crept to the edge of the bed, wading on all-(wobbly)-fours through the hillock of furs and cloths that his absent caretaker – no, _minder_ , now, most likely – must have draped on him at some point, and peered closer at his new neighbour.

No, _neighbours_ , because he had just discovered the edge of a rough, thick light-brown-grey paper peeking from under the plate.

` _ **Paper**_ _? In_ _ **Jötunheim**_ _?! Can they even_ _ **read**_ _? Let alone_ _ **write**_ _?_ `

Frowning, he eased the paper from under the plate, gawked a little at its apparent smallness, then turned it over in hope of finding some writing on the other side, because the upside part turned out to be empty.

The small gamble worked. There was some writing on the previously hidden side of the paper, indeed, conveying a rambling message nearly identical to the minder's spoken words despite its brevity, carried by a very small – for a jötun, he would imagine – and neat rounded handwriting done in _glowy pink_ thick ink. The lettering and actual message were translatable by Allspeak, but there was a brief line of characters above the name of the memo writer that might be of Ymska origin, and most likely carried either a rote greeting for written correspondence or a translation of the Allspeak-translatable name in Ymska. It read:

 **Out to the market for a moment. Will bring you there next if you behave. No leaving bed. Like kampi? Will buy you some. Powder from its seeds mixed with oil for the paints is good for making colours glowy, you know, if you didn't know before. Sip the frozen milk I prepared by the bed. Must be finished when I'm home.** **NO HIDING IT AND/OR GIVING IT TO ANYBODY ELSE.** **Respect me at least a little in this matter, Bump.**

 **Eðlenstr  
(But I'd prefer you call me Etta or Íto Etta, if you'd deign to grant me either of those wishes.)**

Seated cross-legged against the wall opposite the door that the bed was pushed against, which had by now been decorated with a simple rendering of a Vanirheim forest scene in place of the headboard, he looked down at the message for a long, long moment, contemplating each and every nuance it might hold and glancing just as speculatively to the plateful of… _milk?_ … every so often. Questions, theories and suspicions crowded his boggled mind, making him more and more unsettled and overwhelmed by each rapid addition to the lot.

One thing was clear, however: Breast milk seemed to be highly valued by at least the minder, if not the jötun society at large; breastfeeding, if looking back at the minder's – Eðlenstr's? – reaction to his rejection to it some time ago, seemed to be even _more_ so. _Even_ when both were aimed at feeding someone who was _by no means_ a baby; and given by someone who was most likely not any relative or close friend of the targeted person's family, either, although Eðlenstr did seem to have some tie to Jötunheim's Royal Family in the past if judging from her mutterings.

It totally stumped him.

It took Loki far more time to finally reach a skittish hand out to the plate, let alone to bring one of the pebbled frozen milk to his lips, than it usually took him to contemplate _and enact_ a plan to neutralise a highly complicated and dangerous magical artefact. Nevertheless, the moment the iced milk began to melt in his mouth, his previously ignored instincts overcame the hesitation in a very, very short order.

It felt like snacking on a very big, perfectly ripe cluster of amna, minus the overly sweet taste that he usually could not abide. As he had never been able to enjoy the experience of snacking on those clustered, oval thumbnail-sized bits of fruit given his palate's preference for somewhat subdued tastes….

Well, by the time he had gained enough energy and equilibrium to leave the bed, the plate's contents were sans twenty or so of its occupants already. That number increased to a third of the plate when he was confident enough to walk while holding his precious snack, and to half of it when he managed to creep to his earlier spot across the room, beside the lone – nearly floor-to-ceiling – window.

In fact, he only realised that he was finished with the plate when a long moment's rooting blindly on its somewhat bowl-like surface produced him no more bit to suck on.

"Damn."

Worse, he himself did not know whether the curse was aimed at the lack of more iced milk to snack on, at his somewhat overstuffed belly and overenergised body, at the fact that he had been _re_ addicted to this substance, at the feeling of _anticipation_ his instincts exuded on the thought of getting more of that in the near future, or at the fact that _he had just_ _ **obeyed**_ _the instruction of a jötun,_ _ **more or less willingly**_.

" _Damn_."

That bumbling, rambling, earnest, honest, childish – _even a teensy bit endearing_ – demeanour could very well be weaponised.

And he would not have a sufficient shield to defend himself against it, let alone anything that he could use as retaliatory offence.

"Damn…."


	11. Eðlenstr, Part 2

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Is there anything like "semi-willful misunderstanding"? And however in the realm of possibility can it lead to the creation of an exquisite snow-doll plus an unplanned snowball fight?

11\. Eðlenstr, Part 2

The juncture between walls that Loki was leaning against sported a large window that extended nearly to the floor and seemed to lead to outside the dwelling on the left-hand side, and an expansive pale-grass-green canvas newly painted on with various whimsical shapes on the other one. The "daylight" that he observed outside the window was puzzlingly darker than what he had begun to get accustomed to, and not the twilight or overcast sorts of "dark" as well, at which thought he found himself astonished to be knowledgeable about the distinctions so soon – in just one Asgardian week plus one day – in his estimation, at least. However, as his minder had not seemed to worry about the state of the sky, nor barged in to take him somewhere safer to avoid incoming violent weather, he chose not to bother about it for now.

He spied a silhouette of something that looked suspiciously like a skiff outside, but sadly had to admit to himself that he was not yet even half recovered from near death to attempt an escape. Besides, before taking off, he must retrieve Avlar first, not to mention Ovrekka's beacon, precious for them – him? Her? – and Loki himself, useful to boot. He wished he had thought to grab the latter from the bedside table before it had vanished somewhere else.

Proof that he was, regretably and quite unfortunately, not _yet_ at his peak condition, or he would have foreseen such a move in anticipation of such a need.

So, hoping to remove the tortuous temptation that he could very well do without, he retracted his attention back into the room proper.

He had to blink in incomprehension several times over, mouth embarrassingly agape, when his eyes landed on a rather large pile of fresh, pristine, soft-looking snow parked close to his right beside the empty plate, _inside the dry, well-enclosed chamber_ , where it had not been a moment ago. Tearing his flabbergasted gaze away from the anomaly treated him with the sight of his erstwhile caretaker standing at the door, garbed in a plain, slim-fit leather loincloth with surprisingly and curiously sedate tones of dark green; there was also the even-more-interesting addition of a plain cloth sleeveless shirt of similar tones that covered only the chest… which still did _not_ hide the nippled breasts beneath, and made him look further up hastily to avoid more staring.

Likewise uncharacteristically as far as he had known her, Eðlenstr was silent and solemn and watchful. And, when their eyes met, she looked pointedly back at him as if raising her – nonexistent – eyebrows in the apparently universal implied question of "What are you waiting for, silly?" instead of saying anything.

He returned the look, conveying another universal implied question of "What on the Nine Realms am I supposed to do with this thing?"

A huff was her answer, at first, the first sound that she made in this second conscious encounter of theirs, which was eerie – to him – for such a huge, purportedly barbaric… being, especially one who had been known to him to be cheerfully verbose.

Then, without coming closer, she remarked mildly, while glancing at the empty plate and the large pile of soft snow, "Must you always be pushed hard first in order to have some milk or play, Bump? I am sure Elder Fié never teaches you Bumps like that, regardless of how hard life has become for us all. They were always strict with us – me and Đinyé – but I would have become a wild child and dragged Đinyé with me if they were not. – Or is it just I that you feel uncomfortable with, for some reason?"

` _Elder Fié? Đinyé?_ _ **Bumps**_ _? What's with the plural? Isn't "Bump" just her silly appellation for me – for some odd, most likely inane reason?_ `

He tried not to frown at the whole statement, to give the wrong response, regardless of his ever-mounting confusion, and he was reasonably sure he managed to keep a straight face. Nevertheless, something _misconstrued_ must have shown on his countenance, or been indicated in his very silence, for Eðlenstr gave him a curious and loaded stare – spiced up with some hurt to boot – before at last entering the chamber proper.

Folding her long, bare legs gracefully, she joined him on the floor near the indoor snowdrift, at an angle to his spot, and scooped up some snow into her hands. For a while, he just watched with mild interest as she made a small replica of… herself?… with packed-up snow and seiðr-aided colours and lines.

"I apologise," she said at last, quietly, as she handed the doll – which was as big as his forearms combined – to him, some time after. "Playing with this kind of medium may still be too much for you, on hindsight. I did not think deeply of what you could safely do. You should not use your ice and seiðr yet, the paediatrician said. Elder Koðrati is always berating me about not foreseeing all details for all perceivable outcomes…. Now I am bungling it, when it is crucial." A sigh, then, more determinately, "Do you wish me to make you some more, for a make-believe? A replica of Elder Anga, maybe? If you tell me or draw me the jitya of the other Bump, I'll make you one. Or are you at odds with them right now? Is it why you ran away to the fields? – Well, or do you wish for some ice for a construction game instead? I could make little replicas of those shapes well enough with ice, you know. Or I could buy some stone ones from the market. You could always trade them with the other Bump when you are back home, although I am reasonably sure the both of you have better ones in your possession there. You could always claim the ones from here as souvenir or something like that if you want." Another sigh, then, "I'm sure I can't top up the performance of your abý, whoever they are, when it comes to taking care of you, let alone your amma, but… can we be friends, at least? I'd love to, you know. I do care. I apologise if I have made you uncomfortable instead; it has never been my intention. – Well, Elder Koðrati already contacted the Capital for your retrieval. You'll be home soon, no worries. And… you know, if you want… I could take the blame for you, with your amma. Just don't leave your amma willy-nilly next time, Bump; there are many dangers about."

She never looked at him again, not even when she had handed the doll to him, which he was now gingerly cradling and scrutinising… and finding out that the lines did not match hers, or even his.

Not _all_ of his, at any rate, which made _more_ theories and suspicions and questions pile up in his mind, in addition to the deluge of foreign information she had just heaped on him, and the increasing certainty that he thought he knew just why she was so silent this time.

"The doll is beautiful," he offered, awkwardly, feeling wrong-footed yet again, but – surprisingly – sincere nonetheless. And the replica deserved the praise, indeed, for it still felt very much like packed snow, unmelting even when in contact with his bare skin, but the shape held true even when he pressed a little harder on a spot on its belly, and both it and the colours were detailed enough that it looked as if he were holding a miniature adult jötun in his arms.

She gave him a wan smile and a handwave of a shrug to the little compliment.

Still without looking at him, or trying to scoot closer.

His heart, customarily hardened against all things frost giant, twinged. He would rather not possess anything similar to any jötun, including some lax in the self esteem department… well, _especially_ that one, rather, since it felt so bizarre and would make the jötnar seem like _people_ , even more honest than most of the Asgardians he knew, even, admitting to insecurities like that… but this was _Eðlenstr_ , however annoying, confusing and babying this one had been acting towards him. So he insisted, injecting his words with as much feeling of sincerity as he could bear showing while trying to catch her eye and lifting her replica a little, "No, it is beautiful, really; so detailed, almost lifelike. I like it, and… hope, that I can keep it if it is possible, without the shape melting back into snow. I would like to apologise as well for the misunderstanding we seem to be having. It was not my intention whatsoever to offend you. I only wished to spare you unnecessary burden in taking care of me. You need not bother yourself terribly with toys for me, or minding me so closely. I highly appreciate what you have done for me; taking care of a… well, taking care of me must have been hard. But I am sure you have other things to do, things that have been postponed for the sake of nursing me back to health. Please do not deprive yourself any more on my account. I still need a place to stay for some time yet, unfortunately, but I am reasonably sure that I can take care of myself by now, including amusing myself without putting more burden on your hospitality."

He gave her a small, uncertain smile, and hoped that both his honesty and sincerity shone through in his babbling.

But, judging from the odd, tight countenance Eðlenstr was now sporting, coupled with her suddenly distant, oddly professional politeness as she dutifully murmured that taking care of him had all been a pleasure and an honour for her, he had just exacerbated the situation and hurt her further.

` _Damn it all to the Void. Why are we always misunderstanding each other? What does she want with me? What does she think of me?_ `

A part of him knew the answer, he could feel it, but he skittered away from it all the same.

He skittered away from the developing situation, as well, by veering the topic and tone sharply: Laying the doll aside and absently packing up some snow into a ball, he asked as casually and humorously as he could, "Were you the one who put this little snowdrift here? Did you snownap it from somewhere?"

The corny teasing earned him more success with bridging their communication than the serious effort had before, to his grumpiness and further bemusement: Eðlenstr let out a brief breath of a chuckle and quipped half-heartedly, "You pined after my skiff so much that this little snowdrift got jealous. I was here three times already and this little one was there for two of it, but you chose to get starry-eyed over that pompous metal box instead."

He launched the prepared snowball at her in retaliation for the remark, huffing and unable to suppress some of his amused grin.

For now, he chose _not_ to think on how she had been successful in sneaking up on him without his knowledge _thrice_ quite recently.

He was too busy dodging retaliatory snowballs, anyway.


	12. Eðlenstr, Part 3

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: What can one do, if the emotional and physical attacks are _both_ out of the option? How can one break an inadvertent attachment, _too_?

12\. Eðlenstr, Part 3

Eðlenstr claimed to be Tora's Chief of Defence Forces, when Loki outright asked for her occupation when not taking care of stray runts, once they were sufficiently distracted – and he was exhausted _again_.

The claim was hard to believe, to him. For one, given the fact that Eðlenstr had _breastfed_ him, he considered it an undeniable fact that this person was female; and from what he knew, even in a rather non-militant realm like Vanirheim, let alone one that was clearly military-oriented like Jötunheim, females were generally discouraged from joining the military; therefore, it would be almost impossible for a career-military woman to gain any worthy position, including the chief of defence forces for a town. For two, Eðlenstr's usual temprament did not seem to fit her purported post, something as serious and weighty as a commander of troops, however small and/or depleted Tora might have been from the Asgard-Jötunheim war more than a millennium ago; a painter, yes, a whimsical one at that, whose works he would have gladly admired in other times provided that he had not known to which race the painter belonged, but not a soldier, let alone a _commander_ of soldiers.

The focus of his latest rumination had just brought out a platter of the kampi fruit she had mentioned in the memo – juicy, dark purple-grey, fibrous thin strips that smelled sour-sweet fresh and tasted likewise with a hint of bitter – and they were sharing it now, on the flor amidst the remnants of their snowball melee, eating daintily with their hands. He watched her eat from the corner of his eye, and found her action to be… graceful, even dignified, despite the fact that she was seated cross-legged on the floor, that the platter was set _on the floor_ as well, that she was sharing just this one platter with somebody else instead of getting one for herself, and that there was no eating utensil used. This latest observation only baffled him more, in addition to her earlier claim, his even earlier observations, and this new silence of hers, which might be _because_ he was soon going to leave her for the Capital, a prospect that he was actually trying to avoid.

Well, Loki Odinson – now nomanson – had always been a curious person, to the benefit and detriment of himself and others. What puzzled him, he puzzled it out… or outright asked about it to an authority on the subject. This time was no different. It could serve as something to break the new awkwardness they found themselves in, too.

"If I might ask… did you spend the time away just to spy on what I might and might not do?" he wondered aloud, making sure his voice had a good dose of humour in it.

He was sure, if Eðlenstr had a pair of eyebrows and some hair on her scalp, she would raise both to her hairline. As it was, the expressive look that was pointed strongly at him managed to quirk the edges of his lips into a genuine, genuinely sheepish grin.

He had been caught.

He had to watch himself more, after this. All the babying that he had received since he had fallen into this realm had made him softer, less closed up, more prone to displaying his emotions, even _dependent_. This development was very, very dangerous, especially _when_ he managed to escape off-world, whenever it was. But if he could use seeming childishness to butter Eðlenstr up, to gain her sympathy, and then the much needed information about the world outside her bedroom….

The look the jötun pressed on him turned _darker_ , shockingly, as if she knew what he was currently thinking, although he said nothing and was reasonably assured his expression remained blank. The remark she threw at him next, instead of the joking answer to his joking question that he had expected, just unsettled him more, and vanished his small smile in a trice:

"It is not nice, Bump, to use your own family members like tools. You might want to behave more like your amma than your roúnaí, when it comes to family. I may not be your family member, officially and by lineage; but you are still my nursling. Please respect me in this, as you did the milk I gave you."

` _Nursling…. It comes back again to this odd culture around_ _ **breastfeeding**_ _of all things, does it not?_ ` he mused, with an inward shake of his head. ` _And how on Yggdrasil did she manage to peg what I was thinking, even on general terms like this?_ `

He had indeed gained a piece of information, all the same, if unexpected, and even if it was not related to his immediate concern.

He had indeed inherited his shrewd, ruthless mind and tendency from _somewhere_.

Although, it was _still_ not at all comforting, if that _somewhere_ had let him be abandoned in the cold….

He looked away, and pushed the platter closer to the jötun, with one strip of kampi still left on it. What could he do or say, otherwise? If he said "I did not mean to" or "How on Yggdrasil did you come up with that conclusion?," it would put him as the fool and insult the intelligence of both himself and Eðlenstr. If he ignored the matter, Eðlenstr would maybe come up with an even darker interpretation to his innocent attempt to both clear the air of awkwardness between them and find more information on the outside. If he tried to defend himself, the jötun might either better her perception on him or have it worse….

Dealing with this new, silent, serious Eðlenstr was really, really _far_ harder than doing it with the chipper, bumbling version.

Well, he had tried to be nice, to begin to repay her efforts to take care of him and entertain him. But if she wanted honesty, then honesty she would get, _as a weapon_.

"You are so silent now. It unnerves me. Did I do anything wrong? You do not need to contact the Capital, by the way; I can take care of myself, now, given your diligent assistance. Just tell me what to do and I'll most likely do it to repay your kindness."

Judging from how taken aback she looked at present, he had managed to sweep her figurative feet from under her.

But then she replied, and it was his time to get wrong-footed.

"I can be silent as well, you know, Bump. Else why in Ymir's name would Elder Koðrati ever consider me as a warrior, let alone the commander of warriors? To defend a town of civilians, no less? And you know full well that children as young as you are are not obliged to work, let alone one of your station. Do you hate me so much that you would get your amma to have me executed, or to execute me themself? I assure you, however soft and indulgent they can be to people in most times, Elder Fié would not be pleased should they find me concealing your whereabout, _and_ you working to 'repay my kindness'. Is it not enough that you just tell me I should distance myself from you? Elder Anga already made it clear barely a fortnight after you were born, you know. I just thought… I just thought I would have a second chance, you know?"

She jumped to her feet. But before that, he had spied water glimmering over her crimson eyes, and a show of fearsome sharp teeth that could mean pain or grief or fury or a combination of all three.

A jumble of emotions sought to pull him in all directions all at once. The rending sensation the maelstrom created felt like an open gash contaminated with saltwater.

He made a sound, he thought; he made a move, he thought; but what he really, really knew was that he _never_ wanted to hurt this being – this _person_ – even if he could do nothing else, somehow; and he did not want her tearing herself away from his life, either.

It did not surprise him as much as her last response or his subsequent agony had, thus, that he found himself clinging to her leg with a limpet's strength and tenacity and dedication before she could take more than a couple of strides towards the door.

He did not tell her about his utter ignorance regarding the jötun society. He _could not_ , even if he wanted to, for a reason he could not define even to himself. And still, she picked him up and cradled him in her arms. And, in time, despite his remaining reservation, also despite the earlier bounty she had given him indirectly, he even got to taste more of the heavenly meal he had begun to be addicted to.

It shocked him, again.

Unconditional forgiveness felt _horrible_ , it turned out.

If Loki had thought to construe how swiftly and easily Eðlenstr had buried their latest, worst yet instance of miscommunication as weak-heartedness and ignorance to life's perils, he had to revise the perception soon enough. With how he had turned down going to the market to buy toys and refused to play more with the snow or his yet-intact new jötun snow-doll, Eðlenstr, with her upper torso once more covered by the green half-shirt, had brought him to the training hall of her troops; and there he sat, watching her as she sparred with jötnar larger and visibly musclier than she was.

 _And she won,_ _ **all the time**_.

She fought like a man, he thought. It also seemed that she poured all the frustration and hurt she most likely felt towards him into each of her sharp, aggressive moves.

She fought like a blend between Thor and Sif: fiery and powerful, but graceful.

To think that he, in his weakened state, had been under her mercy for however long it had been…. And he had been antagonising her, _too_ , whether he had meant to do it or not.

But when she picked him up from the bench he had been occupying, with no protest whatsoever from him since he was still gaping at the show he had just been treated to, the cuddly embrace he was trapped in felt like one of Mother's – no, _Frigga's_ – hugs, minus the copious sweat.

What a baffling paradox. – Sif, the only female career warrior that he knew, had never been good with children, nor had she ever shown any desire to better herself in that area, not wanting to remind her warrior comrades that she was after all a woman. Volstagg, ironically, was far better than she was at it, well-practised with his brood. – Could it be, then, that Eðlenstr was some sort of an ergi man, a father at that: all male but with the ability to breastfeed?

She – _he_? – padded to the far corner of the training hall, addressing a quartet of quiet jötnar about some medical appointment for him for tomorrow morning, but Loki found he could not concentrate on their conversation, let alone participate in it, even though it was about him. Only one thought – or rather, one sequence of thoughts – ran in his mind: He could not afford to anger Eðlenstr again, nor could he force himself to hurt… _him_?… as their earlier altercation had proven, but he could not afford being shipped off to the Capital, either, so he must fetch Avlar and/or Ovrekka's beacon soon and skedaddle off-world, probably with that former travelling companion of his in tow.

Why, though, did the prospect of leaving this place forever feel _painful_?


	13. Miscalculations

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: It's all a pile of little miscalculations on so many parties. But at least, for now, it's still manageable… right?

13\. Miscalculations

Being loomed over by people many times one's size while one was laid back naked for a medical examination was always unpleasant, in Loki's opinion. Now, he found out, being loomed over by _jötnar_ while in the aforementioned situation brought him past the unpleasant stage and straight into _primal terror_. Unfortunately, before he could kick and punch and wiggle his way free, one of the jötnar – the ones from yesterday late afternoon from the training hall, in fact – had taken it into their huge, _clawed_ hands to restrain him physically, by help of _yet another one_.

He was all too surprised that, after all the fuss, what they – or rather, the remaining two – did was only to cast what sounded and felt like medical diagnostic spells on him, plus one for… anchoring a scanner?

Still, once he was free and somebody – _something_ – else came into view, it took him just half a second to scramble to the edge of the hard, cold surface of the huge stone table and jump down to the floor far below with a shriek of "Monster!" vibrating in his throat.

"Sorry! I apologise, all right? I thought you knew the procedure! Hey, Bump? Where are you going? Do you want to go out there naked? Please don't! You are not yet fully recovered! Please don't use your seiðr yet! Oh oblivion…."

True, the use of even just a simple cantrip for telling direction to the outside already made Loki stumble hard in sudden weakness and dizziness. However, compared to the possibility of having to endure yet _more_ of such a frightening, humiliating ordeal, this was a perfectly acceptable price to pay.

A statement that he sadly had to revise heavily a moment later, as he collided _hard_ with a pair of giant shins and fell sprawling on the smooth icy floor.

 _And blacked out_.

And regained consciousness in _those_ arms again, as if he had never expended such an effort to flee in the first place.

It mollified him a little that, whoever the newcomer was, they seemed to be giving his muscled cage quite a talking-to in Ymska, one that made the latter cringe like a thoroughly scolded boy after a particularly messy prank.

And then, down below, a familiar – and surprisingly _welcome_ – voice piped in during the lull of the tirade, speaking in simple Ymska that was most likely deliberately formed thus for his benefit, "Look, elders, Lokyé is awake!"

Avlar. After seemingly endless days of wondering where the boy was….

"Bump?" his holder immediately babbled, in Allspeak, while taking a step back from their irate interlocutor. "I apologise, all right? It shall not happen again. You are going to the paediatrician for the next check-up. These healers were simply for convenience's sake, I admit. I was just feeling too tired and thus reluctant to go farther away to make an appointment with the paediatrician. They just happened to be in the training hall. These were battle healers from the war with the æsir, and they happened to pass by the town."

He shook his head wildly to it all, regardless of how _more_ dizzy it made him feel.

"You need the check-ups, you know," the muscled cage wheedled. "I shall not have you sliding back to that frightening state when you were firstly brought here! Your amma will chop me into pieces! And Elder Anga will likely dance on the remains…. Please have pity on me, at least?"

"You already ruined the first _conscious_ appointment for them," the irate interlocutor pointed out in a much more gravelly voice than _hers_ was, in somewhat accented Allspeak, sounding more disappointed and worried than angered at present. "What made you think they will trust your judgement again and agree to go to _any_ healer with you?"

His holder cringed again, but seemed to be semi-gracefully acknowledging the chastisement, by not saying anything back.

"You have your duties, _youngling_ , and you have been postponing them for a while. Get on with them, now," the newcomer said at length, sighing heavily. "I shall bring these two to the library for the day."

His holder reacted with a third flinching motion on the word "youngling," making Loki wonder vaguely about… her? His?… actual age, and if that word held a negative conotation here, but he was otherwise entirely too interested with the word "library" to care.

"But Bump hasn't eaten yet, Ma'am," the muscled cage complained worriedly. "The healers took some time."

Loki could not care less about this, too. He had been starving before coming here, and the prospect of more hunger sat unpleasantly in his stomach, but the promise of seeing a _jötun_ library for himself was assuredly much more important than any missed meal right now. He had never even _thought_ that a race of monsters could have anything resembling a _writing system_ before that memo _she_ had slipped for him, and now it seemed that these… that they… had _organised collections of writings_!

So he squirmed and elbowed and punched and kneed and kicked and even bit his way through the firm, muscled arms caging him, regardless of the squawked complaints the owner of those arms were letting out, and stopped only when the newcomer plucked him under his armpits right from those arms with the admonishment of, "Repare your relationship with the little one tonight, Eðlenstr, but for the time being _do your own_ _ **assigned**_ _duties_ , for Ymir's sake. Caring for a little one does not excuse you to be slothful."

Loki was dangling awkwardly on thin air _far away from the ground_ now, naked and under the mercy of a totally unfamiliar jötun. Not any improvement from his earlier predicament, especially when the new jötun's all too discerning, all too critical pair of red, glowing eyes looked him up and down as if apprising the worth of _something_ , not a sentient being capable of being mortifyingly embarrassed and freaked out.

And then the newcomer continued, in a reproving thunder that sounded much like a high military officer berating his hapless underling despite the appelation of "Ma'am" Eðlenstr had given… him? Her?…, and it was his previous holder's turn to be under the flat but shrewd gaze.

"You did not even _dress_ them after the examination. Were they even dressed before the examination? Or did you just let them run naked everywhere? – Were you planning to do _anything_ good today, youngling? Did you treat them like this all the while they were under your care? Whatever have you been doing this moon-turn? And _you_ were the one who _begged_ me to assign you minding duty for this _specific_ one for the duration of their stay in Tora. Have you even asked for your charge's _name_? Or have you just been calling them that _inane_ thing that is not even a proper name?"

"They were dressed, before, Ma'am!" Loki's previous holder squawked weakly. "The healers wanted a thorough examination, Ma'am, so I undressed them. I was going to redress them before breakfast just now." She scuttled backwards without turning her back to the newcomer, rummaged somewhere, and came up with something that she pressed gently against Loki's waist.

And then, she seemed to change tactics, from a military underling to… something else, not just more informal but also more _intimate_ : "See? I was about to bathe them, first, Naðyé…. I thought it would be a treat…. At least let us have breakfast together, please, Naðyé? It will be our first _ever_! I can deliver them to the library after that. The other one, too, if you would let me. Please?"

The newcomer's firm, if softer "No" to Eðlenstr blatant grovelling sent mixed emotions flooding into Loki's mind. Compared to the far taller jötun and how deep and stern and authoritative they sounded, despite the notion that they were a _woman_ , Eðlenstr truly seemed like a bumbling adolescent idiot.

But a caring, sincere idiot that he was more or less familiar with – _much like Thor_ , when the moment struck it.

An unwittingly cruel one, at times.

A condescending, babying prat out of – dare he say – a sense of love, _not only duty_.

Homesickness rose above all others once more, after a rather long absence, threatening to make him physically ill.

How grateful he was when the newcomer put him back down on the floor _at last_ and even let him choose which clothing he wanted to wear: the one provided by Eðlenstr, or his own that Avlar had told the newcomer was stored in his pocket dimension during the two's journey.

In response, he retrieved one of the outfits on his size that Ovrekka had found those ages ago in the clothing storage of their "gannha," which they had asked him to wear once he had arrived in Tora, from his pocket dimension. Here was Tora, after all, although he was not fully certain that such enclosed attire would be appropriate for city use among the jötnar, given that Avlar was currently wearing only a simple white loincloth. But he wore the slim-fit, pale-coloured, fancy – if rather rough-stitched – knee-long cargo breeches and fur-and-leather sleeveless, low-necked, front-laced vest anyway, to remember the gentle care that he had firstly known in this land of monsters, and the boy sincerely trying to be a man that Ovrekka had been.

He must admit, at least to himself, that he _also_ did this partially to retaliate against the disastrous healer appointment Eðlenstr had pulled on him this morning.

And judging from the wounded noise she made behind his back, flavoured sweetly by Avlar's poorly stifled snickers, Loki had his revenge.


	14. Library, Part 1

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: There is, apparently, a very, very inconvenient disadvantage of being considered a child in the society. Going into a battleground one previously thought one knew with this disadvantage in action is very, very inconvenient indeed.

14\. Library, Part 1

Being made to walk hand in hand with Avlar through the wide and surprisingly well-kept bustling streets felt awkward, to say the least. It was only made worse when, facing thicker knots of stomping and ambling and hurrying giant feet, the new jötun – who was yet to introduce themself even now – hoisted the both of them up, _as if they were little children_. Even worse, variations of what sounded like "little soldier and their friend" or "little noble-one and their servant" were cooed or chattered as passing comments in both Allspeak and Ymska and maybe even other untranslatable languages _by huge, ugly, alien unknown monsters who – no,_ _ **which**_ _– had no business doting over little ones in the first place_.

Loki wished, not for the first time in this supposedly short, supposedly _un_ excruciating trip, that he could just shift himself to the library. He could barely see anything past the wall of blue-skinned, line-marked, tough-looking bodies, anyway, even when he was perched in whoever-this-was' arms, so he could not even enjoy whatever scenery this place might offer despite the ongoing torture by humiliation. They must be near the centre of the town by now, given the increasing press of… _things_ , intersperced with various other modes of transportation, and a part of him wondered in interest about how near it was from Eðlenstr's house, but he really could not wait for the sanctuary that the library must turn out to be.

The site of the humongous, elegant edifice of gleaming darkish blue and silvery white marked the seeming end of his ordeal, and he gleefully slid down when his holder offered for him and Avlar to once more walk on their own feet. There were thankfully a set of steps running on the middle of the main staircase leading to the huge open doors of the building, dividing it into two, built with small-enough steps to accommodate much smaller legs.

He tried to loose his minder while inside, feeling stifled and naked under all the attention locked onto him and Avlar. But then he clapped his eyes on the _numerous_ shelves looming ahead, _full_ of well-kept-looking tomes and scrolls and even thin, odd squarish devises that must also contained knowledge, and the effort doubled. All of his attempts ended in failure, though.

He really, really wished he could shift himself to those shelves. ` _This is so_ _ **humiliating**_ _!_ `

Worse yet, his captor _calmly_ thwarted his new bid for freedom, _each time_ , in all its variants. And in the end, he got carried _again_ while suffering the knowledge that Avlar – the brat who _kept sniggering_ _ **at**_ _him_ – stood free.

And he could practically feel _amusement_ washing down his struggling form, so pitifully small and scrawny in such a hulking giant's hold, from all the eyes watching him from _every corner_.

He slumped in his captor's arms, at long last, wishing that he were strong enough to shift himself – _away_ from the library, now. As it was, ignoring the heavy, uncomfortably warm sensation that clung to his face, he swallowed his disgust and pretended that he was a small child indeed, burying his head into the crook of the stoic giant's neck and whining softly until all the attention passed him by. _Only_ then did he lift his head back up and look around – _really_ look around, this time.

Past the humongous double doors, he could see that what looked like a spacious foyer was arranged, seemingly as a reception and waiting area, or maybe as a place to peruse the books quickly without too much bother to everyone involved, or maybe even just as a decoration to enhance the edifice's sense of elegant magnificence… which was _working_ , as much as he would like to deny it. It was empty but for the row of – _unoccupied_ – seats in various sizes and make that lined the far wall, and also a large, open stone chest containing what looked like either cushions or piles of furs on the corner that shared walls with both the double doors and the aforementioned line of forsaken seats. The few jötnar that occupied the open room, who seemed to vary in height and built just like those seats, lounged in their own – just as varied – gleaming ice chairs instead, which were furnished with the contents of the stone chest, and they were scattered in various places within the boundary marked by a blue line done in wavy pattern over pristine white floor. Now that he – or rather, his _struggles_ , he very much suspected – no longer interested them, they got back to their previous preoccupations, which ranged from books and loose sheets of paper to books and what looked like personal recorded music players similar to what one could find in the markets in Asgard; and even, on one smallish individual that might be Đorkyn's age judging from the size, a book hovering in thin air and a lapboard on which queerly shaped, colourful stone pieces were stacked together precariously.

Past the foyer, an enclosed lift system stood, chained shut as if already for centuries, beside a smaller, winding version of the staircase that led into the building. Again, jötnar big and small traversed it occasionally, laden with all kinds of knowledge repositories that made Loki resent his demeaning, constraining current placement all the more.

And then his captor moved _at last_ , approaching a long, bluish-cream-coloured marble counter parked on the other side of the stairwell, and his attention was derailed by what purpose such a furniture, manned by a couple of large but slim jötnar with a white sash with delicate, complicated purple scrollwork borders draped across the torso of each, might hold in such establishment. If not for the elegant feel and subtle decorations adorning the counter, by way of delicate carvings meandering all over the vertical piece supporting the top, and if not for the lack of drawers and shelves in place of the said vertical slab, he would have thought the sturdy, spaciously surfaced thing would be a good kitchen counter in a tavern or even in one of the smaller kitchens in the palace he had used to call home; it could certainly hold a good-sized boar _plus_ assorted dressings. Were the jötnar so ferocious in the written accounts and tales, not only in violence and warmongering, that they would need such an expansive piece for consultations regarding manuscripts held in and topics encompassed by sections of this library? And the said expansive piece was manned by _two_ people! In even _the palace's grand library_ back home – no, _on Asgard_ – the receptionist station only held a small desk, which was mostly drowned under stacks of tomes and scrolls hastily dropped by people on their way out or into the library, and rarely manned at that….

His captor spoke with the librarian seated nearer the stairwell, though unfortunately in a far more complex bit of Ymska that Loki had no clue whatsoever about. The other librarian, after a time, skirted the counter and sought to lead a semi-reluctant Avlar by the hand away to the stairwell with a kind-sounding word.

"I will see you again at noon, Lokyé!" the child chirped at last, in Allspeak, before they – he? – vanished completely up the stairs, gently towed by the other librarian. Loki, feeling strangely abandoned, only replied to it with a small, listless, sullen hand-wave from his high perch.

The librarian who had been talking to his minder, seeming to notice his response to the use of Allspeak, switched to the language, then, speaking in a sweet, light tone as if a woman cooing over a child despite the deep, rumbling quality to his?… Her?… tone, but tinged with sadness that Loki could not fathom the reason of, "I apologise, little one. I thought you understood Ymska. We were talking about what you might learn today. Would you like to learn Ymska? I assume you have not learnt its written form as well? Or, if you would like to mingle, there is a craft class today."

Loki gave the floor far below a nod to the first offer and a muttered "Yes," and a headshake to the second one plus a mumbled "No."

And just so, as if it had been the most ordinary thing to do in the universe, his struggling form was carried – _still_ – to the no-less-airy second floor of the building, and deposited by one windowed corner. He could look out through the clear – albeit sadly closed – pane, but the view of all those jötnar meandering under the weak moonlight outside just disheartened him more, so he did not let his gaze linger long outside of the window.

From his – somewhat limited, unfortunately – vantage point inside of this new place, he could see that this level was used mainly for education. Small clusters of jötnar larger than his size and also those who were smaller – _far_ smaller, somehow – were gathered on the floor, talking to each other and doing various tasks under the guidance of a few – adult? – jötnar each wearing the same white sash with purple embroidery as the librarians.

Eyes of monsters who were – presumably – more or less his peers in age quickly honed in on him, most likely given his newness, mode of arrival, placement and size – or maybe, especially, _size_ , if Odin's claim that forever ago was to be believed. It was all that he could do _not_ to try to break open the windowpane and escape outside, even to death by falling a few æsir-standard stories down without seiðr to slow him down and cushion his fall. The view of the outside monsters was more preferable to _this_ , as well.

As it was, he sat stiffly and silently on the large fur pillow he had been deposited on, listening to the librarian and his minder – who had seated themselves cross-legged on the floor before him and to his side, respectively – talking _with him_ in Allspeak about lessons and projects that he might like and knowledge that he was yet to acquire. Confusion mingled with the previous hyper-vigilance and unsettlement the longer the two adult jötnar talked. – How had they managed to offer the children of their kind so many education and social programmes after the war and the loss of the Casket of Ancient Winters? Had that ghost village his journey had started from ever enjoyed such a luxury? Or had it always been confined to just bigger, probably wealthier settlements like Tora? Why would they offer a small child – as indicated by their treatment of him so far – these options, anyway, instead of dumping a preplanned schedule on him like his parents – no, no, _Odin and Frigga_ – had done in his real childhood?

In the end, he ignored the ever-piling internal questions and declared his desire to study Ymska reading and writing, jötun – ` _Milaðen?_ ` – biology, also local geography and ecology, for each of the five days in the "bright moon-turn" that seemed to be the jötnar equivalent of working days, topped up with beginner class of ice training after schooling each day; _all_ individual to small class or otherwise too packed with demanding activities for small-talks, and _all_ important to his survival – communication, navigation, danger recognision and close combat. The librarian offered him stone-sculpting, bead-working, knitting, painting and dancing on the side, but he demurred. Any spare time that he had, most of which he planned to spend in Eðlenstr's spacious bedroom, could be used to better his Ymska reading and writing, snoop about, and – _surreptitiously_ – keep his physical fitness up to par the Asgardian way. This place was _not_ a holiday site, after all, nor was he in a holiday. He could not afford spending his time frivolously while being surrounded by enemies and yet to escape.

And then, and only then, did the librarian introduce themself, "My name is Lúkra, little one. You may call me Elder Lúkra, or Elder Lúki, but never Eldy Lúki. May I know your name and what you would like yourself to be called?"

"Loki," he said simply, trying not to fidget, trying not to scrutinise the librarian's markings – the kinlines, the jitya his travelling companions had talked about – as if he could discern what they meant. And then, trying to distract himself, he turned to the other jötun – his minder – who sat with stoic silence beside his chair as if a bodyguard or a valet… or both. "Might I know yours, Ma'am?"

"What a polite little soldier," grinned the librarian, _cooing_ , and Loki had to fight to tamp down the cringing reaction to that adoring proclamation. He had never even thought such a deep and gravelly timbre could make a cooing tone!

He was soon distracted by the heated muttering his minder spewed forth, thankfully.

"That _youngling_. I thought they already told you my name. Now I wonder if you even know their name. _Honestly_. I have no idea how Lékonnar Voðen has not been corrupted by that child in all their friendship thus far. Konnar Laufey should perhaps have chosen a different companion for them."

"Konnar Laufey must have had their reasons, Ma'am," the librarian – Elder Lúkra – smiled, mirth evident. "It is not really our place to question the Monarch, is it?"

"Not if you do not wish to go to the Capital and speak personally with them, or challenge the Monarch in Holmganga," the yet-to-be-named jötun huffed. Then, addressing Loki, they continued, "I apologise for the tangent, little one. My name is Koðrati. You could call me Elder Koðrati or simply Elder," he paused, then, "or Ma'am, if you would rather call me thus," they finished with amusement thick in their gravelly voice, a shade lighter than the librarian's and possessing a sterner quality in it.

"I am the Grand General of Konnar Laufey's military forces," they explained further, without prompting. "However, since the end of the last war, I have relocated myself here under the blessing of the Monarch, to help teach new blood and forget about wartime for a while. – Ah, actually, I have to leave to oversee the training of new recruits presently, little Loki, but we might see each other again during your ice training in the afternoon."

They gave his narrow shoulder a pat, then beamed ferociously down at him. "You have the good beginnings of a good soldier, little one, if indeed you would like to choose a military career later on. But do not be too hasty in deciding so. Choose your own opinion and keep to it, after you have heard all the advice others offer you." They ruffled his already messy hair, afterwards, and finished with, "You only have to concentrate on studying right now, little one. Leave the future to the future. Promise me you are not going to make trouble for Elder Lúkra while you are studying with them? I might bring you to one of my cadets' drills some time if you do your best to study and _not_ make trouble for Elder Lúkra."

Loki nodded sullenly, silently seething on being treated like a child _all the time_ , even by apparently a military general – the highest military general on Jötunheim, according to the introduction. On Asgard, he had been past this treatment more than eight hundred years ago! The high military personages there looked down at him for his seiðr and evasive tactics, yes, but they had never spoken to him as if to a little child anymore past his successful first combat trials at age four-hundred.

Well, but then again, a three-thousand-year-old æsir would have been long settled into their productive years, about to enter early middle age and all the trappings that went with it, while a three-thousand-year-old jötun would be _just_ at their age of majority, according to his travelling companions; barely adult enough for a responsible marriage and the like, if it were on Asgard, though Odin seemed to have deemed Thor ready for kingship by that milestone.

Where would an _almost_ -one-thousand-and-three-hundred-year-old be placed, then, in jötun society, if not the two-hundred-years-to-majority like on Asgard?

What a confusing mess.

And why in the Nine Realms had that grand general included some tangential advice about _his_ future? An implicit threat? An inane meandering? A self-serving toadying? A gift in exchange for a later favour?

` _Damn. I do not need this_ _ **now**_ _._ `


	15. Library, Part 2

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Who is faster: a jötun Asgardian or bits and pieces from his past that seek to catch up with him?

15\. Library, Part 2

Loki's love of scholarly pursuit saved him from any more distraction once the one-to-one lesson on Ymska reading was underway, and once his minder was gone. His self-assigned tutor brought in a stack of chalky-white stone tablets, what looked like charcoal sticks, and a tapestry with Ymska characters stitched on it, silvery white on a rich purple-blue background. They attached the tapestry's corners to the blank stretch of wall behind his cushion using their ice, and the lesson began.

With his stiff and highly discomfited self perched in their arms for an easy look at the basic set of Ymska characters put on top, he learnt to recognise, vocalise and finger-trace the lettering, first. His tutor was astonished and delighted – gratifyingly so, he must admit, even just to himself – when he worked through the basic system and rules of the vast collection of symbols in, in their own words, an unprecedented speed and competence. They did not need to know that he had gained such competency through his stint as one of his father's – _Odin's_ – scribes centuries ago; and he had spent the centuries after that mastering – or at least understanding – various lettering systems and ciphers, even the writing system belonging to the long-dead realm of Niflheim, in addition to decoding a piece of text's real message.

Only now did he wonder, why Jötska – or, as these people said it, Ymska – had never passed through his mind during his studies, despite the disgusting taste of learning anything about a barbaric enemy…. Come to think of it again, had he seen any manuscript about the jötnar in the palace's library?

` _Well, I am_ _ **here**_ _now. I can remedy this knowledge defeciency before I leave, if only for survival's sake. – We spent so much time getting to this town. The message to the Capital must take nearly as long to deliver. I have some time yet. I cannot remain ignorant and under their mercy, always relying on them speaking in Allspeak._ `

Back on his assigned seat on the huge cusion, he proceeded to diligently learn to combine letters and read the words formed from them: simple, everyday vocabulary related to the first five characters of the writing subsets, then seven, then ten, as the tutor, seated across from him on another cushion, wrote those words on a few stone tablets using a stick of charcoal. Writing was learnt through copying those characters and the words they were shaped into on his assigned stone tablets, again and again and again, with his own charcoal stick. The charcoal stick itself turned out not to have quite the texture and quality of those he had been accustomed to: less brittle and gritty, for one, and gliding smoothly on the no-less-smooth surface of the tablets like a piece of coloured wax-pen instead of scratching on it.

Later, he found that the simple vocabulary apparently came with a holographic primer book-shaped piece of technology, complete with sound recordings of how each word was pronounced and what it meant in other tongues. The devise was activated and fed by thin streams of seiðr, _and he could borrow it to study outside of the classroom_.

There had not been anything like this arrangement – or this technology, for that matter – on Asgard, except for those of the noble class who paid particular attention on education, scholarly pursuit and technology, the number of whom was fairly limited even in combination of each. To think that, _here_ , this kind of luxurious tool and chance was available to the general populace, at least in the bigger settlements….

Or was it truly publicly available, really? Were these people treating him as his station demanded it – as his markings told them to, as Avlar had once claimed in other words? What did they want from him, if so? What would these people gain in sending a message to the Capital _for him_ , for that matter? Why would they spend precious resources and time and energy for a runt that would be rejected outright by whoever was going to receive the message, anyway?

It took his tutor several tries to regain his attention. And still, even as he forced himself to renew his attempt to make a sentence – or rather, a word chain – from the words he had learnt, their eyes had never left his hunched self, as if they knew that his heart was no longer in the lesson.

And then, the said tutor got the idea to play a word-chain game with him, with a small bag of highly colourful stone beads as the prize….

He fled the cushion, the tutor, the taunting bag of beads. But he couldn't flee the sudden, inexplicable longing for Eðlenstr that the various bright colours of the beads evoked in him. This bizarre, ridiculous urge just topped up all the various thoughts and questions that the presence of the high-tech primer book had sparked in him, and he couldn't bear it while in such a close proximity to _anybody_.

Libraries on Asgard were always guilded but ultimately useless corners of a nobleman's home – or a wing on the palace's farther side, in a greater scale – and books were rarely allowed to be carted out of those places, regardless of how little they might see use otherwise. Those who could access such resources were, in consequence, those of the noble class or at least highly favoured by that ilk.

But _here_ , in this land of monsters, in this huge, packed, beautiful, well-organised library that Loki could only wish he'd had access too long before this, he'd spotted rather numerous people with various bearings and numbers of family lines from his ever-changing hideouts among the shelves. They were reading things ranging from coated scrolls to book-shaped electronic devises, all shoulder to shoulder and avid and relaxed, as if they were all equals and had equal opportunity to gain knowledge and have the pleasure of it. He'd seen only one instance of class distinction, when a smaller – maybe younger? – jötun, with less intricate markings than their counterpart at that, yielded the book they were about to read to another jötun; but even then, the exchange had gone without a hitch, let alone grovelling from the lesser jötun, and the said lesser jötun quickly immersed themself in another book nearby all the same.

Feeling somehow disturbed by the scene, he talked to one of the other visitors of this main wing of the library, just long enough to get a direction to the shelves containing the Allspeak-translatable manuscripts, with the plan to immerse himself in books so that he did not need to observe the interactions of frost giants overly much anymore. The scoffing remark that the jötun tagged at the end of the instruction, about the uselessness of "learning Allspeak," only added to the surreality and all the thoughts and questions smothering him.

He began to get an inkling of how low the opinion of the jötnar – not only some of them – was on Allspeak – or maybe Asgard, as the main propagator of the use of that particular spell-skill – when, upon arriving at the area as instructed, he was greeted with the sight of a seemingly long-abandoned couple of shelf columns; so starkly messy and disorganised, when compared to the other parts of the library. Still, if a little cautiously, he began to peruse the shelves, looking at titles and choosing the neutral-seeming, simple-seeming ones to read.

He settled down in a nearby reading nook, a pit of pillows and furs on a slightly raised dace which was just as unkempt as the shelves were in this section, with _A Compendium of Ymirheim's Predators_ , in the end. The enchanted tome was marked for "two thousand five hundred years and older," but… well… he did need to know more about the dangers that were present out in the wilds of this broken, hostile land, anyway, and it was stupid to assign such a vital bit of knowledge only to someone well past their majority.

The gruesome details on the life-like images and descriptions of each entry soon enlightened him to why the bar was set so high, although he was still in the opinion that someone a millennium younger than two-thousand-and-five-hundred could still read the tome safely. People like Thor would certainly relish books like this, even if they read nothing else.

And then, he came upon an entry near the back of the tome, and all bemusement over age limitations was driven clear out of his mind.

The picture alone managed to clog his throat like few others could. – A hulking beast, built more vertically than horizontally, was wreathed in fog so that it did not seem quite solid. It seemed to glide over the rocky land that served as the background, too, just like a tendral of mist would. A maw of large fangs, sharp and serrated, appeared out of the fog like a forest of deadly trees. Blue-black liquid dripped from many of the fangs in good amount, and Loki could not help wondering if it was jötun blood that he was seeing there. The dozen long, clawed arms framing the fanged mouth, topped by a cluster of sharp, beady eyes, only served to trigger the fight-or-flight instinct even more.

This compendium named the beast "the nightmare glider." The picture of it alone could certainly incite more than a few nightmares, even to a tough Asgardian like Thor and his ilk.

Still, Loki swallowed his instinctive fear and forced his eyes to move away to the caption beneath the picture, which, in this compendium, listed the image provider and the circumstance of the person encountering the animal being featured.

 **Image provided by Laufey Bergelmir-childe, 782nd Monarch of Ýmirheim, the only person in the recorded history of this land who slew three of this beasts in one encounter, when ambushed on their way to Agglasý.**

` _Laufey…._ ` – But there could be more than one person named so, could it not? Surely this fearsome-sounding Laufey was not the one he had slain so easily in comparison, in that recovery chamber of Odin's? Maybe this Laufey was the ancestor of his own sire? Why would the Laufey that he knew have visited a poor district of the land, anyway, if the Agglasý that Eðlenstr had referred to some time ago was indeed the same with this one?

He read on; and the longer he read, the heavier and more constricted his heart felt, as if clutched by a merciless iron fist.

Because, past the drier bits of fact about the beast, including the admission of the author of the compendium that little of this species was known despite its ancient history given its lethality to "Milaðen," the entry went on to describe that, oftentimes, the only indication that a member of this species was nearby was when one's instinct of danger went off. – Despite its bulk, purportedly bigger than "the kindreds of the fields and the valleys," a nightmare glider moved lightly over even the most difficult terrain and thus left little track to follow or to overhear. The water droplets that somehow coalesced round its form as tendrals of fog further muffled the senses of hearing and smell of its prey, and worked with lethal tandem with its ability to move at top speed over short distances. It was attracted to living prey of any kind that was taller than three feet, which was the lowest reach of its lowest arms, since its bloated head-body could not bend and its pair of slim legs similarly did not seem to be made for bending. It made no sound, either, except for the crunching of its teeth on its prey.

Just like what had happened to Derek….

Being found weeping in a remote, long abandoned corner by the tutor one had fled from without any good reason was nearly as horrifying as the startling – and startlingly poignant – grief for a frost giant itself. It took Loki a long moment before he was aware that he had once more migrated – unwillingly – into the arms of a big blue monster, and yet a longer moment for him to at last try to wriggle free.

"You should have heeded the age label on the cover, little one," was all that the jötun commented, even as they tightened their arms round him and wiped the tears that still stubbornly seeped out of his eyes in trickles. "You are… what? A thousand years? A thousand and two hundred, at most. – Well, in any case, you are not even _half_ of the required age, Little Loki. You should have known to mind the warnings on a book even if you could not yet speak Ymska."

The gentle rebuke, which was surprisingly not patronising, was nonetheless _humiliating_. More so, when they emerged out of the main section of the library and Avlar was there, waiting anxiously, shifting from foot to foot.

"Lokyé! Are you all right? I mean… what happened?" the boy burst out as soon as Loki was on his own feet again. The addressee shook his head. However, his erstwhile tutor seemed to have a different idea and extended their admonishment to Avlar, with "nightmare glider" thrown in.

Their baffled self soon had to contend with two weeping runts.

The librarians that Lúkra – Loki's once tutor – had galvanised to soothe him and Avlar managed to get the whole sorrowful tale of flight and capture and death from the latter, while a very, very tight-lipped Loki chose to determiminedly bury his nose – shield himself, in other words – behind a big tome about Jötunheim's flora, which was now assuredly for the ages of below one-thousand-and-five-hundred. Panic ensued, however muted by – most likely – some respect for the venue, and the Grand General was called back to the library to receive the highly alarming report.

Loki had no desire to see… her… any time soon, however, and, repaying Avlar's genuine show of concern for him, an alien concept that it was in his sorry life, he toted the boy along with him in his escape.

a strange young orphan without any clear background that he must look to the jötnar, nonetheless, saw no heads turning when he said to one of the librarians on the front desk that he wanted to bring _two_ books out of the library, one of which being the high-tech primer book his self-assigned tutor had shown him during their aborted lesson. It was not because of the purported royal kinlines that he had, though, apparently, like he had briefly suspected, because Avlar toted _four_ of them in a leather backpack. Some others, trundling along with the two towards the front door, were likewise burdened by at least a book each, either in their hands or in various bags.

He exited the library's building feeling even more confused and dumb than when he had come in, something that a library rarely incited in him nowadays.

To think that _this_ library belonged to _monsters_ , and manned by such….


	16. Misinterpretations

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Misunderstanding could be amusing, aggrevating, tiresome… or very, very deadly.

16\. Misinterpretations

Darting between the blue, bare legs of giant monsters sent a strange thrill through Loki, caught between excitement of the simple game of it, terror of being squished flat by those swinging and stomping huge feet with their fearsome toenails, and rage – on principle – against the said monsters for obstructing the way. No familiar jötun – and was it not a ludicrous concept in the first place? – had come for him and Avlar outside the humongous library, and, meanwhile, there was still time before their physical training commenced in the evening, so Avlar had decided to go search for entertainment and maybe some food in the nearby marketplace, and he had merely tagged along.

At least, he had merely tagged along until they had arrived, just now, at the place that Avlar claimed was the said marketplace. It was an open square lined by various stone buildings just a little bit nicer and a little bit more spacious than the little dwellings Loki had first seen in the village that was now no more,

And it was packed nearly to the gills with _jötun adults_ ,

Giant brutes who were incredibly interested in the two runty newcomers, who were at least twice taller than he was, if not thrice… four times….

He had begun running long before the first of those humongous monsters had finished reaching out a hand towards him and Avlar. The unnervingly – _comfortingly_ – familiar squawk and pounding light feet behind him told him that _that idiot_ was following behind, if grudgingly and bewilderedly.

"Why did you run away, Lokyé? I wager that elder just wanted to pat your cheek or something!" his out-of-breath tagalong whinged, as soon as they had cut their way clear to what looked like the opposite side of the square. Loki himself was not better, breath-wise; in fact, he felt like fainting any second now from lack of air. But, well, the snow-strewn yet otherwise well-kept road running beside the square was blessedly empty at present, so, _at long last_ , he could justify letting his body drop sprawling beside a nearby road marker – one of those square stones… or maybe highly packed ice?… that were as high as he was and twice as wide, which looked almost gleamingly new when found round this town instead of outside in the wilds.

Avlar mimicked him, too close to where he was parked for his comfort. But, like each and every time before, he just focused on the boy's voice instead of the said boy's form, to forget _what_ Avlar actually was.

To forget what _he_ actually was, for that matter.

Still, that boy made it so easy and yet torturously hard for him to relax, with how the topic of the monologue that ensued was never far from – dubiously – delectable meals and interestingly varied things to trade back in the heart of the square.

He ended up tagging after Avlar _again_ , back into the square, back to where they had started, when the faraway rumbling sounds of busy jötnar had faded into a more tolerable level, just as the colour of the sky began to darken into a dim shade of gold. He told himself it was only because the roadside they had been ensconced on had begun to receive too much attention from _adult_ jötnar.

Well, regardless, he was the first to demolish whatever the little cubes were in the incongruously flimsy stone container Avlar handed him outside one of the food stalls. Thankfully, for a child, Avlar knew when to hold one's tongue.

" _Lokyé_ …. Come oooon. Elder Koðrati will be mad with us already for what we did. We need not tempt them further!"

But, again, Loki refused to heed the panted squawking from behind him.

They had stolen their way to what Avlar had claimed was the training hall, once they had been finished with their hurried snack. But the training hall, though a humongous thing that it was, nearly as beautiful-looking as the library at that, was packed with jötnar, _too_.

 _Armed_ jötnar, _clashing with each other_ , though many of them were _just_ twice his size.

And those monsters had noticed the two tiny loiterers by the humongous double doors.

And they had rushed towards the said hapless runts _with ice weapons drawn_.

What could Loki have done, then, but to flee with all alacrity? His seiðr – his trusty weapon and shield all at once – had not yet even half way recovered from the battering it had been receiving since he had landed in this accursed land, by then, and the physical exercion had not helped it.

He did not know where to go, what to do other than run and hide, how to shut Avlar up or leave that squawker behind on the worst case scenario. But he did know that he _must_ go, or all the trials and tribulations he had been facing all this time would have been for nought, ending tragically under the mobbing weapons of semi competent monsters. After all, even when he had been well and hale and gone to Laufey's throneroom with his brother – no, _Thor_ – and those four idiot parrots calling themselves warriors, they had been on the verge of a total loss when Odin had deigned to rescue them. Now, with him weak as a puppy and accompanied by a mostly worthless boy like this, he had laughably _minus_ chance of success, should they be caught.

If only Avlar would understand – _or just shut up_.

"Lokyé? Are you well?" the said mostly worthless boy whispered, as the both of them huddled in between two steep piles of snowdrifts forming beside the rough-hewn wall of a modestly sized building – in Loki's standards. He amended the statement by himself afterwards, grumbling, "Huh. Of course not. Pale as snow like that. Why did you run away, anyhow? You did not seem to be fazed with the sight of a weapon before. Do you remember the village that rejected us? You placed me to the left, but I still saw how that wombless _thing_ threatened Rekki with that club, and you were not fazed, then."

"Wombless?" Loki whispered back, faintly. His head was pounding in rhythm with his heart and – oddly enough – the circumference of his ankles and wrists, now.

"It means… well, having no womb, really," his interlocutor tried to explain, painfully obvious in their awkwardness. "It, erm…. Please don't let Elder Koðrati or Elder Eðlenstr know that I said that? – Well, anyway, 'wombless' means being less than even an animal taking care of its young. It means having no capability at all to care for living things, to nurture the young. It means Ýmir does not bless you to become their extension, to house and care for the souls they entrust to you, whether later on you would choose to accept the duty or not. Being called a wombless thing means you are worst than the bitterest weather, because even such weather brings renewal to the land afterwards, while a wombless somebody of course cannot help Ýmir bring remade Children back to the land, therefore they have no participation in the renewal, and thus totally useless."

"Sounds more religious and thoughtful than a curse word ought to be," Loki remarked, trying for his best flippant tone, even as he strained his ears in the attempt to listen for any newcomers to the alley they were occupying.

Avlar huffed a small laugh. Tugging Loki closer to him, practically cuddling the smaller, semi unresponsive body sidewise, he teased back, "And you? Whatever is wrong with you, huh, four-lines? Too much coddling at home? I thought you would be more accustomed to such explanations, your slushiness?"

Loki let out a thin, almost breathless chuckle. "Yet another insult, that, I'd wager," he mumbled, barely coherent even to his own ears and mind.

The bands of pain round his ankles and wrists had tightened considerably now, throbbing in time with his mercilessly wrung heart and brain, and he was barely conscious from the pain. He could not decide whether the whisper and crackle of huge, heavy feet on snow and ice that he was hearing belonged to just his imagination, either; but, to be sure of his and his idiotic companion's safety, he tugged the sides of the snowdrifts that faced each other into their hideout with a couple tendrals of seiðr, while forming a dome of air round their heads to give them enough air to break themselves free later on.

Avlar's squeak of shock – but oddly enough, not fear – was muffled by the mini avalanche.

It was Loki instead who got terrorised by claustrophobia.

But he could not do anything about it, now. The shackles on his limbs, in his heart, in his brain: they paralysed him more effectively than mere chains ever could.

With increasing potancy, each time he moved or worked his seiðr.

With the feel of _somebody else's seiðr_ running in his blood, now he noticed.

He felt filthy. He felt violated. He felt like some fowl trussed up for dinner set beside a ready pan, somehow. – Whatever spell he was under, he realised now that it meant to sap him dry.

He was buried in a cool, powdery stuff in no time at all. It felt soothing on every inch of his burning, tightly stretched skin.

Something – or was it somebody? – stirred beside him, patted him – or maybe shook him? – but he could not even open his eyes by now, and breathing was a laborious chore that demanded all his concentration.

Then, as the heavenly cool powdery stuff was shifted aside from him and something – somebody? – sought to encompass him physically within it, the bands tightened to their limit.

And he knew no more.


	17. Identity

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: The discovery of an ugly truth is always a wretched experience for all parties involved. Only, Loki never thought to guard from one aspect of this….

17\. Identity

Consciousness came back like a bolt of lightning rending the darkened sky, this time. – And how pathetic it was, for one to get accustomed so much to bouts of unconsciousness to acknowledge a _this time_.

How pitiful it was, also, for one to have a _preference_ for how one should return to consciousness. – Because now that he was at last awake and more or less coherent, Loki wondered with dazed longing where the wordless song he secretly adored was: the train of eerie and eerily meaningful notes which had greeted him in the previous couple times he had regained consciousness. Everything was so silent, unnervingly and tensely so, and it made him want to return to the peace of oblivion. Worse, every minute detail of his being felt battered and as heavy as house-sized boulders. He could not even open his eyes, let alone move anywhere, and the vulnerability frightened him.

Worse things were yet to come, he knew. He was _still_ in the land of monsters, after all, judging from the scents on and ambience of the air. – And _that_ , in a way, was the worst torture of all.

Thrice he had expected to die in this broken land, and thrice he had been spared. – Why would the Norns spare a monster like he was? Why did they keep sicking saviours and companions on him? What possible plan did they have for him in a place like this?

Endless loops of thoughts swirled maddeningly in his mind. So, when oblivion came again, he welcomed it gladly.

Everything was still so unnervingly and tensely silent when Loki next awakened. The desolate atmosphere was unchanging, and so was the state of his body. But something _else_ had clearly roused him, judging from how his pounding heartbeats were welcoming him at present.

And then he noticed the quiet, intense regard laid on his person from somewhere not so far away, captured by his heightened senses, now overly sensitised by paranoia.

Laboriously, he opened his eyes, then spent an inordinate amount of time blinking in the dim light that nonetheless overwhelmed his sight. The only comfort that he could take right now, as pathetic and degrading as it was for a warrior like he had been raised to be, was that he would have died a long time ago if this intruder had indeed meant him to die, with how slow and weak his responses had been thus far.

Still, the notion did not help him calm his heart any, when the intruder moved closer to where he lay, helplessly stretched out on something soft and smooth like live offering on an altar.

That unruly organ in his chest skipped a beat in the next instant, when the said intruder dryly murmured in a gravelly voice that he remembered from a recent acquaintance, _in the æsir tongue_ , however thickly accented, "Greetings, Loki of Asgard. How are you feeling this afternoon?"

His mind blanked out, and so did his fight-or-flight response. He felt numb all over.

It was only afterwards that Loki realised he had _fainted_ on hearing the intruder's proclamation, like a frail, sheltered maiden when proposed for marriage by a boystorous hunk of a warrior.

With cheeks burnt by shame, he forced his eyes to open again and scan his surroundings with the limited neck-swivel range that his muscles could manage at present. It took an inordinate amount of time for his mind to process the details trickling into it, as supplied by his slowly adjusting sight.

Firstly, he was utterly astonished that the small room he was in was, after all, _empty_. Where were the guards that should keep both eyes on him all day and night? Where were the restraints on all movable parts of his body, just in case the ás pretending to be a jötun tried to flee? Where were the interrogator and torture devises? Or the _executioner_ , even?

Then again, where were the invisible bands of pain that had squeezed his limbs and heart and brain into agonising unconsciousness? Had his jailers freed him of those? If so, they had been very, very stupid and wasteful, forsaking such a resource. That set had been a good leash: secure, efficient and effective; better than he would have thought to construct for his bitterest enemy, even.

Well, in any case, he was free now. As soon as he regained his strength, these imbecilic monsters were going to regret not chaining him better. After all, he no longer had to pretend to mingle, to act as though he were one of them.

He would kill them first, before they killed him.

He was going to _live_.

Somebody – no, no, not a monster, he had been the monster in that skewed relationship – had _died_ for him, without asking anything from him in return; without _having any reason for him to live_ in the first place, either. – He had been a total stranger, after all, and he was sure that person had known very well how Asgardian he was despite the skin he had been wearing all this time, given his attire back then, and they had _still_ treated him _like their child_. – So he was going to live, for himself and for that stupid somebody who had died in an _Asgard's_ _ **former**_ _prince's_ stead.

He would kill these creatures, get the only other person who had known who he was and had still cared for him from the slavers if they were still alive, and maybe Avlar too, then he was really going to leave this forsaken iceball far behind.

He pooled all his strength together and dragged himself into a seated position, to make himself at least feel less vulnerable at the moment.

He surveyed his surroundings from his new vantage point with growing bafflement, next.

Now that he felt more collected, more focused, with a new plan – or the semblance of it, for now – in mind, he could tell that this place felt… familiar, somehow, despite how small it was, with bare, translucent ice walls stretching to all sides at that. The furs and pillows laid on the small cot he was occupying felt even more familiar on his naked skin and in his trembling hands.

He dragged the white, luxuriously soft – if rather thin – fur that had been covering him back to his shoulders, then up to his nose for a better sniff.

And he had to hastily stifle a sob when he took a far deeper inhale of the scents left on the blanket.

He smelled himself there, but also _somebody else_ : one that was not _that stupid somebody_ yet had cared for him attentively all the same, with enthusiastic love and chattery chipperness and bumbling earnestness, alike yet unlike his not-brother.

He had to stifle a hysterical giggle, now, as he remembered having been called _Bump_ , of all things, by this particular idiot.

Where was that idiot? He?… She?… had planned to hog him for… well, _herself_ ; as unnerving as that sounded, even now. Was that plan abandoned now, because he was after all not the "Bump" that she had sought to reconnect with? Was he just an Asgardian clad in jötun skin, too, to her?

Was she just as monstrous as Odin was, then: giving him hope of attaining affection, only to mockingly rip it back, knowing he was not what any of them wanted?

Still, he pulled the blanket tighter round himself, curled up into a fetal position, and buried his face in that bit of fur that still held _that scent_.

He was pathetic.

Too busy weeping and raging at himself for falling into a trap twice, Loki at first did not realise that he had company, _that his vulnerability had a witness_.

"Loki," the voyeuristic gawker said quietly, and his head snapped up, eyes wide and wet and unseeing.

He blinked, blinked, and blinked again.

A jötun. Less familiar. Huge. Hulking. In a relaxed pose. At the foot of the Loki-sized cot. Long arm reach. Could easily pluck him up from that other end of the bed.

 _Hostile_. The monster who had sniffed his identity out in some way.

His hand automatically shot up and flicked sharply in a fluid motion, in order to release one of his daggers from his pocket dimension and fly it to the heart of his target.

But nothing came out. Nothing even happened.

There was even no pocket dimension to retrieve _anything_ from, now he realised, with rising horror and an inkling of an answer to how his identity had been sniffed out.

"Loki," the monster repeated. And the addressee pressed himself right up against the bare, translucent ice wall that served as the headboard of the cot, clutching at his white fur blanket as if to a shield that could possibly defend him.

He shifted into his æsir form, then, and ignored the bitter shock of chill that raced up and down his naked back. – If he was to die here and now, with his businesses unfinished, he would at least like to die in what he considered his true form. Nothing and nobody could rip this one choice out of him.

But the monster just regarded him silently for the longest while, unmoving, ignoring his defiant glare and his shift into the face of the enemy.

 _Why_? – The monster was _supposed_ to be the grand general of Laufey's _whole military force_ , were they not? Why had they not struck him down yet? Why had they not done it in the earliest possible moment since they had found the damning evidence to his duplicity, even? – Him, Loki, one of the bitterest enemies of the realm, who had led jötun warriors to their ignoble deaths in Asgard, who had led a warmongering Thor and that oaf's band of parrots to Laufey's court uninvited, who had killed jötnar in the battle that had ensued, _who had killed Laufey in a bid for treachery far away in Asgard_.

He was weak and defenceless as a newborn _right now_. It was a perfect chance. Tyr would have used this chance to drag him to Odin for judgement, or simply to strike him down on the spot if he happened to be in his monstrous form, and Tyr had the same capacity as this monster in Asgard.

"Loki," the monster murmured musingly, instead; slow and melancholic, as if savouringly tasting the name of a dearly departed in order to slake a useless yearning for what could have been.

Then they sat down on an ice-grown chair at the foot of the cot, and, of all things to remark, said in the heavily accented æsir tongue they had used before, "You are not supposed to be this big and this old yet, little one. What did they do to you there?"

"Why on Yggdrasil would you care about my form and age?" was the sharpest return that Loki could devise in his sheer astonishment and bemusement. But still, he welcomed the chance to use what he considered as his native language.

"Because you are still little, child, and thus the responsibility of adults to care for," the monster pointed out drily, unperturbed by the confrontational tone… well, maybe because the deliverence had been just a tiny bit shaky. "And with those markings, and with the wards and enchantments washing away from you, it was so easy, also, to deduce who your parents are for people who are close enough to them to have seen similar markings on their bodies. – Kinlines tell a lot, little Loki, although they do not tell all. – And with whom your parent is, I am also, professionally, obliged to care."

Loki stiffened on the news of his treacherous markings on _that other body_. He stiffened only further when the monster declared in a low, fierce tone, forsaking their earlier near-indifference, "I told you, little one, I am the Grand General of Queen Laufey's military forces. I _am_ loyal to Queen Laufey. I and my people will protect you with our lives. – The insurgent elements who harmed you so are still being flushed out and corraled right now, but the four who harmed you directly have long been detained, to await your mother's wrath. It turned out that they have been doing that since the last war to soldiers under Queen Laufey's banner, so this also answered several inexplicable questions."

"What," Loki swallowed, "do you think is my current relationship with your king, that you would divulge such a thing to an enemy of the realm?" And Laufey had been – _was_? – a _king_ , right? Else how had the Asgardians been so _wrong_ – how had _he_ been so wrong?

"What," the monster returned, in a deceptively mild tone that raised his hackles, "would make you think that I would divulge such an information if it were not pertinent to you, little one? – And please do not call your mother a king, little Loki. It is insulting, not to mention quite untrue, since she after all carried and birthed you."

Loki clenched his fists just beneath the blanket. "I am of Asgard," he bit out, feeling reckless and antagonistic under the bombardment of frustration, confusion and helplessness. "Do you think I would divulge state secrets to you in exchange for the titbits of information you gave me? Do you think your _king_ would appreciate you leaking secrets to your bitter enemy?"

His captor and interrogator shook their large, blue, ridged head and sighed, equally frustrated. "We need to talk more, after this," they decided. "For now, let us table this discussion. You are still shaken and recovering, and I am distracted with what will come next. Please discard that hot-weather skin for a while, little Loki. The weather is too cold for that, especially if you decide to go without clothes like now, and falling sick from easily preventable situations in this vulnerable state would spite many people's efforts to bring you to this point, including your own. You can wear it again afterwards, in this room, if you feel comfortable with it, and I shall make sure you are supplied with suitable attire to supplement it."

He gave them a frankly disbelieving look for that. " _Afterwards_?" he repeated in the same frustrated harrumph. " _What will come next_? – How can a corpse change into this skin, unless prespelt beforehand?"

The look was returned to him, two-fold, tinged with confusion and a smidgen of anger. "What corpse, Loki?" they said sharply. "You are _alive_. Eðlenstr paid for their misstep more than ten-fold already, to help bring you back. Please do not throw your life away to spite what they _accidentally_ did. Please do not spite our effort to bring you back, also, child. Tora loves you, despite the action of a few insurgent elements hiding in it."

` _Eðlenstr._ ` Loki's breath hitched. "What did you do to her?" he whispered, wide-eyed. "What did you do to me? What are you going to do to me, if not to execute me for being an Asgardian?"

The blue hue of the monster's skin paled considerably, and their red eyes widened exponentially. " _Execute_ you?" they squawked,for once losing their composure, also reverting to Allspeak – perhaps in their extreme agitation. "Eðlenstr has been _dying,_ trying to _save_ you, and here you would like to be _executed_?"

"Dying," Loki breathed, stuttering, stunned. "Dying."

Grief burst in him, sudden and sharp like the punch of an offensive spell or a barbed arrowhead.

"Dying." His voice wavered noticeably now, but he could not care less about it.

"Dying." He was turning into a stupid parrot, and yet the word still refused to register in his numbed mind.

"Dying."

His second caretaker in this harsh land was _leaving_ him, to where he had proven time and time again that he could not follow, and he had not thought to guard against it past the initial fear of the notion.

He had been the most idiotic of all the monsters.

Caring would be his undoing.

Caring _was_ his undoing.


	18. Sacrifices

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Can deadly sacrifices repay the debt of deadly blunders?

18\. Sacrifices

Arms wound round Loki, blanket and all, and lifted him away from the wall, away from the cot, away from the tiny room that turned out to be just a small part of a larger room, sectioned off by temporary ice walls. He was pliant as a wet rag doll, leant against one broad, blue, muscled shoulder, but the shoulder that he had not sought for.

"Bump," he breathed into the side of the thick, short blue neck whose muscles visibly tightened like a bowstring on that little proclamation, with hysterical laughter bubbling in his wet voice. "She called me Bump." ` _She planned to have me for much longer,_ _ **hoped**_ _to do so. She wanted to have_ _ **me**_ _, in whatever small capacity, and I spited her in return._ ` He tried to swallow a sob. ` _She promised me a breakfast and a bath. She promised to walk me to the library._ `

` _I did not see her being her bumbling, stupid self for the last time. I was too busy trying to best her,_ ` he realised, as one huge, blue, black-clawed hand gently moved his face away from the shoulder it had been draped over, and he witnessed the large but not-so-huge being laid in a coffin-like box wreathed in strips of blue light before them.

Jötnar were not supposed to be white.

Unconscious people were not supposed to be _still_ in pain, especially when no scar – no _new_ scar, apparently – was to be seen.

But Eðlenstr was of a bluish white colour now, and the cragginess of a jötun's features could not hide the rictus of agony carved deeply into _that face_.

"We were waiting for you, little one," came a gentle murmur through his suddenly ringing ears, back in the æsir language that now felt quite out of place, almost sacrilegious. "Eðlenstr is the lastborn in their family. – Their parents have given their consent, and so have their siblings, womb-kin and otherwise. We cannot reach second-Regent Voðen – their shield-sibling – away in Asgard, nor do we have enough time to reach the Royal Family in Útgarð, who sheltered them for much of their childhood and adolescence, and that leaves only you, little princess. You were Etta's first and last nursling, at that, and such status is prized even above royalty among us."

"What…," he heard himself stutter faintly, as if from a great distance in a cave of rushing water. "What do you want with me? What do you want with _her_?"

He was enveloped more thoroughly in the arms that caged and supported him at once, as if the action could shield him from a terrible blow – more terrible than the current reality, _than this_ _ **utterly wrong**_ _sight_.

And then he knew why.

"The healers and priests would like to ask for your consent, Princess Loki," his holder spoke distantly, but still with the tinge of grief that could not be thoroughly eradicated by the formal tone. "They would like to terminate the life support and–."

" _No_!" Loki surprised himself by the swiftness and vehemence of that one statement. But if anything in his life was a lie, if anything in his life was unsure, this was _not_.

"Every moment spent in this state is more torment for them, little one." The thin veneer of formality in his holder's voice was beginning to crack, as was their voice. "The land suffers for the lack of its anchor, and tapping into its lifeblood now is like crashing into a thick wall of thorns on full tilt without any protection whatsoever… and still we try to do so, instinctively and by habit, when we are spent. It is what Etta has been doing subconsciously, and it only hurts them more, while their seiðr is yet wounded and unhealed from the effort to bring you back."

"Bring me back," Loki repeated numbly, his breath hitching.

"You died, little gem, for _half a day_ , from the leeching spells placed on you by those _traitors_." No pretence of formality was audible anywhere in the ragged statement, now, nor did his holder speak in Aldska anymore, and Loki surprisingly appreciated it, very much so. Avoiding the petrifying tableau before him, he cowardly lay his face back into the nook between the shoulder and the neck that was even now jumping spasmodically in the – very, very unprofessional – mighty effort to stifle the onrush of grief.

And he listened, as his holder stuttered through the recounting of what had happened _three weeks ago_ by Jötunheim's calendar, starting from when his seiðr had failed him under that mini-avalanche hideout he had made for himself and Avlar, on that distant day.

Avlar – young, trusting, earnest Avlar – had jumped out of the protection of the mingled snowdrifts on the first sign of adults approaching. But the adults coming there had only _pretended_ to be concerned for Loki's wellfare. The four of them – the very same four battle healers that Eðlenstr had called in for that disastrous so-called medical examination that morning – had brought the two children _away_ from the paediatrician's office instead of towards it, and the boy had quickly noticed it.

Unwisely, he had screamed for help.

Koðrati, who had just finished cluing his imbecilic underling about all the suspicious aspects of the purported medical examination, instead of overseeing the training of the recruits as they had told Loki earlier, had caught up with the foursome _only_ after Avlar had been beaten up into silence, nearly to death, and that was also just _because_ a riot had broken up right on the spot between the insurgents – more than the four of them, it turned out – and the loyal citizens.

Eleven loyal citizens had died, faced with the power of the mostly militaristic _and military trained_ rebels, and one of those dead had been one of Avlar's tutors. One of the librarians who had so warmly greeted that boy when he and Loki had arrived at the library that morning, in fact.

Avlar had spoken not a peep since then, and removing him from Loki's side had proven as impossible an endeavour as getting him to talk. So he had been there when the healers and priests had tried to resurrect the only – _false_ – companion he had left from the desperate, disastrous journey out of his ghost village, and witness to how Eðlenstr had desperately offered herself to be the conduit for the largest harnessing of seiðr they had ever attempted after the Casket's loss.

Many had offered up their seiðr – _their lifeblood_ – for the endeavour, including Loki's own erstwhile tutor Lúkra, although Koðrati was sure none of them had deduced who Loki was despite the death-triggered failure of the magical cocoon of identity obfuscation that he had unknowingly been wrapped in his whole life, and many had come to near-death for that. And _still_ , more had come for the same reason, on that day and the days afterwards.

Eðlenstr, with hands laid on his body skin to skin, had indeed become the vessel that would store, purify and channel the offered seiðr from so many different sources into his body, for the hours that it had taken to finally restart working. – Jötnar were creatures of magic, truer to that fact than many peoples out there in the universe, even more than the vaunted æsir, so it had been hoped that, with such transfusion, Ýmir would grant Loki's return to the magically spent body he had fled from, now that it had been resoaked in seiðr.

A ludicrous concept to Loki, but a sound one to Koðrati. And with how he was living and breathing and moving and thinking now, _even when his saviour lay dying before him_ , Loki had to concede to the jötun's perspective.

And Eðlenstr lay dying in that hated state in that hated coffin-like thing because, in actuality, however magical they were in nature, or maybe _because_ of it instead, jötnar were _not_ supposed to be emptied and filled repeatedly like common jars, by seiðr that was not their own at that. At the same time, there was also the strain of bending those alien powers far enough to force them to be compatible with Loki's own seiðr, whose echo was preserved in Eðlenstr in his bond as the woman's – the young woman's? – nursling.

In short, according to the memory that Avlar had provided and Koðrati had supplemented, remmnants of insurgence from the last war – which last war? Had there been a civil war inside the realm itself after the one with the æsir? – had deduced who Loki was in general terms despite all the obscuring geas, wards and enchantments wrapped round him and his sense of self, and sought to kill him slowly but surely with a malignant but largely undetectable spell. The effort had born fruit, if only for half a day, at that. However, to Loki, the deadlier result was the uncovering of his identity through the failure of his pocket dimension and the magical cocoon not of his own working.

Avlar had unknowingly given out his hideout among the snow to his temporary killers, just as Eðlenstr had unwittingly helped to kill him. Still, both had paid for their respective mistakes _much_ more than they had deserved, and Loki had no energy to hate them all the same.

Just to grieve for them.


	19. Loyalty

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: True love and loyalty are never intelligent or elegant, nor are they sensical for the most part.

19\. Loyalty

The priests – the best mages in all the realm and the most in tune with the land, according to the Grand General – made protests and threw censuring looks that they no doubt thought were covert at Loki for his decision about Eðlenstr, but he could not care less about it. Driven by their duty, those mages kept feeding the life-support system – the coffin-like box with those lines of blue light running along its crystalline walls – with their seiðr in turns. Sympathetic soldiers that Eðlenstr had commanded as Tora's Chief of Security shared theirs, as well, which suggested that they were loyal to that endearing, bumbling oaf and wished her to recover, something that surprised Loki to no end when juxtaposed with the reaction of the priests.

There was oddly no word supporting or against the controversial decision from Eðlenstr's own family, who lived in the bush-forested foothills somewhat near the town.

That was telling enough, and probably the reason why that bumbling oaf – who had had no business being even a _tiny village's_ chief of security with such glitch of judgement – had clung to her "Bump" so.

Loki would like to offer his own seiðr for the effort to maintain the said bumbling oaf among the living, _but_ he could not summon even the slightest spark to his fingers yet. He wanted to avoid spending his waking hours alternatively staring at Eðlenstr's tortured, sickly form and staring at the raised markings adorning his own blue skin, _but_ his earlier plans of vengeance and escape would have _guaranteed_ her death instead of prolonging her life. Avlar was still nowhere to be seen, despite the Grand General's earlier claim that it had been quite a chore to separate the boy from him, _but_ he could only muster a weak curiosity regarding the said boy's whereabout at present. The children's primer and the book about Jötunheim's flora that he had been reading in the library had been handed again to him, _but_ they did not even merit a second look when the Grand General had proffered him those.

He felt so, so empty, useless to boot, not to mention aimless, confused, helpless….

The Grand General nursed him and a very, very silent and still and blank Avlar when Jötunheim's evening fell and dim gold began to tinge the sky. Unlike before, Loki did not react at all to such intimacy, just letting his body have its way with its natural responses, and just distantly acknowledging the boost in strength the milk gave him. In a way, he felt grateful that he had failed to form what he knew now as a nursling bond with the Grand General, unlike what he had subconsciously done with his previous two caretakers.

People ought to be wary of caring for him. He had killed his first caretaker and nearly done the same to the second one, after all. The Grand General should avoid him before they became the third.

He told them just so, once he and Avlar were done nursing and put to bed in Loki's – now expanded – cot.

"And yet I am here," the huge jötun said simply at the end of his explanation, which had been tinged by anxiety despite his best effort to stay neutral. A handwave of a shrug answered his subsequent pointed look, along with a humming tone deep in that thick throat that seemed to indicate amused tolerance rather than anything positive or negative; but then the Grand General seemed to take pity on him.

"The war took so many lives, little one," they explained in turn: slowly, lowly, in somewhat of a non-sequitur, while flicking a brief look to Avlar, who seemed to have fallen into a fitful slumber. "Ýmir lost their anchor afterwards, also, and it has made life here harder for all living things. Animals and plants become scarcer and harder to grow; children stay little in body so long but grow up too fast in mind, and adults die younger, sometimes because of formerly preventable causes. Who would deliver children into such a life? Who _could_ , when we spend so much time just trying to survive? We are still blessed with those children that we have had from before the war, however, so we seek to protect them with all that we have, even to the detriment of our own selves. We have not ceased doing so, until now… and why would we? Children are always treasures in this realm, given how slow they grow and how hard it has always been to produce them for a long-lived race such as ours. You are not an exception to this, little áðkonnar. And would you not agree that hard times call for the best protection for those who seek it instead of otherwise, however costly it might be to the protectors?"

"But… someone… they said people began to have children once more after about five hundred years," Loki parried half-heartedly, allowing his eyes to meet those of the Grand General's from his position: curled up on his side under his ever-present white blanket atop the furs.

"In some places and for some people, it even began as early as two hundred years after the war," the huge jötun agreed. "However, these cases were the exception, not the norm, at that time."

They regarded Loki shrewdly but contemplatively for a long moment, and only then they continued, with yet another seeming non-sequitur, "Ýmir recovered as well and quickly as they could, and so did we, their Children. – Farming for all kinds of food was adjusted and simplified to reduce taxing the available resources, and many who had not thought of taking up such an occupation then plunged into farming projects for the sake of survival. Hunting and foraging was forbidden for a time, except for deepest necessity, to allow the wildlife to adjust to this new, harsher life Ýmir led. That particular edict was withdrawn by the Crown about five hundred years ago, when the realm began to stabilise. Our farms had seen moderate success earlier than that, by two hundred to three hundred years or so beforehand. Only then people began to think about the future, and thus children that might have the chance to grow up happy and well-fed, if ignorant to the former luxury their parents had tasted before the last war."

"You… do not abandon… runts?" unable to help himself, Loki blurted out. He dove into his blanket afterwards, inwardly cursing his weakness for this sore spot.

He was swept into the arms of the Grand General, just so, blanket and all, and cuddled close without a chance to get free.

"Many of us start small, little Loki, especially after the loss of the Anchor," his captor rumbled, sounding unhappy but for a different reason – an unknown reason, fathomless to their captive. "We are like the ice that shelters us, growing slow and sturdy. The people of some Kindreds are typically smaller, also, and our best mages likewise. – Now, who told you this? Did they tell you that you were a runt? Is it why you were taken away from us? From your own _mother_? Did they truly _believe_ what they said, or did they just tell it to you as propaganda against your own kind?"

When Loki kept his silence, his captor continued shrewdly, with no tinge of contemplation remaining, "Did they know that you had a twin womb-sibling? And that such pregnancy could make the babies smaller, since they have to share the one womb with each other?"

The silence was broken irrevocably by the gasp that escaped him, like after a punch to the gut.

"How did you know?" he breathed, almost wheezing in his shock. ` _Not even Odin knew… or did he?_ `

He got cuddled even closer, in response, laid in one arm like a giant baby – in more ways than two. His free arm – that was not pinned under his own body – was fished out of the blanket, then, and one of the Grand General's fingers, with claw barely peeking out from the fingertip, gently traced the marking that encircled his wrist: a pair of double lines running beside each other, twisting into each other twice on the front of the wrist and twice more on the back of it. "Jitya tells much, little Loki, though not all," they echoed their own earlier statement, before adding gravely, "Furthermore, Konnar Laufey was pregnant during the war, and I had the privelege of personally guarding them in many engagements with the rebels and with Asgard, at that time. Their jitya showed that they were carrying twins."

A heavy pause, then, "I was separated far away from them near the end, however, and did not manage to return to their side until some time after the war had been partially lost. I had heard concerning rumours, by that time, and found them searching _everywhere_ in the Capital, when I arrived, even though they were not even a quarter recovered yet from the battles and the birth. – Do not ask me about the fate of your womb-sibling, and pray do so gently to your mother when the both of you are together again. I do not know, and barely escaped alive after asking them that question. They were mad with grief."

Loki retracted his arm into the blanket, and curled into himself the best that he could within the cocoon.

His hands were bloody. The Grand General should not touch them, touch him.

He had _murdered_ his own _mother_.

His own mother, _who had searched for him_ _ **and his**_ _ **unknown**_ _ **twin sibling**_.

He had not been abandoned for being a runt.

"Laufey was stupid," he murmured croakily. His voice wavered with either a laugh or a sob, or maybe both.

"They were. I was. We are." There was a similar quality to the huge jötun's gravelly voice, so alien and undignified for one of their station. "But then again, true love and loyalty are never intelligent or elegant, little Loki, nor are they sensical for the most part."

Oh yes, _all_ of them were stupid.


	20. Broken, Part 1

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Can a broken mender mend broken things?

20\. Broken, Part 1

For days on end, the only company that Loki knew was that of the mostly unresponsive Avlar, the harassed-looking and tired Grand General Koðrati, Tora's Head Priest, Tora's Head Healer, the couple of priests and healers who had the seiðr-giving or check-up duty at that time, a handful of silent and mostly unintrusive guards who were kept on rotation each day and night, and someone else who delivered meals and ice-shard milk for both Loki and Avlar. The last person was supposed to take care of them in a more personal way, too, but Loki had managed to convince the nosy busybody to leave them alone. He took the duty up for the both of them, especially for Avlar, who often spent his spunge-bath time just staring into space until Loki nudged his back, and who would only relieve himself when Loki had firstly dragged him to the privyhole.

The books – Loki's and Avlar's – had long been returned to the library by the same meal bringer, given their lack of interest in learning, or even curiosity to know more. The contents of Loki's pocket dimension were still nowhere to be seen; but maybe it was a blessing, with how his Asgardian attire was included in that lot. He did not need more hassle in relation to that thorny problem.

He needed no more hassle, and he needed no more blood on his hands, although a little or much more of it would likely not matter, after that one murder he had committed in his misguided sense of loyalty to Odin.

The meal bringer tempted him and Avlar with small, second-hand toys at times; and _those_ the said meal bringer refused to return to wherever the old, simple things had been found. – A chipped stone model of a transport skiff, polished smooth and dull in colouring by time, and lightened with the application of just a single passive seiðr rune hidden beneath what was supposed to be its steering station; a packet of stone construction toy with three pieces missing; a stone spinning top with motion-triggered colourful lights on its flat, circular surface, painted anew – or so it seemed – with a cheerful green hue and played with the help of a leather string; a bundle containing small, sturdy wooden sticks, bits of leather string, scraps of rough cloth and a sewing kit, with which he might build a toy tent or a stick figure or the like; a musical instrument – small for a grown jötun – made up of tuned metal bars that were arrayed on a hollow stone table-like platform, to be hit with a pair of sturdy wooden rods tipped with a metal ball each to produce sound….

He ended up throwing none of the toys out himself, after the meal bringer had refused to return them to wherever they had come from for him.

Avlar, surprisingly, was the catalyst for the new decision.

Loki had made the fluffiest stick figure he could manage from the available materials, when staring at Eðlenstr's unmoving, lifeless-seeming body had become too much, inspired by her snow-doll that had not melted back into snow even now, and Avlar was never seen without it afterwards. Then again, the snow-doll that had become the inspiration for the stick figure was never out of Loki's reach. Both figures could be seen propped up beside each other oftentimes, just like their owners, although none of them saw anything resembling playtime thus far.

At another time, one of the more playful guards, purposefully coming out of obscurity, skipped and jerked and rolled the skiff toy along Loki's thighs and arms and back and shoulders, accompanying the dramatisation with a surprisingly good vocal rendering of a skiff's machine in trouble and a pair of pilots bickering inside. He swore he _wasn't_ smiling ever so slightly right then; although, he did try the same trick on Avlar once they were truly alone with just the insensate Eðlenstr in company, for the sake of a pale spark of curiosity, and that boy _did_ smile, however vaguely.

He made a new stick figure with the materials – greater in number and variety – that the meal bringer freshly delivered to them at yet another time, plus an open-walled tent to house it in, thinking of the toys he had sometimes made for the street children in Asgard.

Avlar took both and – silently, as ever it had been after that fateful day – tucked the previous stick figure in Eðlenstr's limp hand. He added Loki's snow-doll after a while, putting it in her other hand; and, somehow, for an unknown reason, Loki felt a pang on his heart, beholding the sight.

Recently, the latter tried playing the musical instrument, softly, searching for the wordless melodies his two caretakers had so generously sung for him when he had unknowingly needed it. He swore Eðlenstr's look of agony melted a little just now, as he at last managed to run a more or less smooth piece on it, even though it was far from the music he had aimed for.

So he played it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, with more variations and adjustments until it became one long, complicated piece.

It sounded a little jagged, still. But then, his two – sometimes three, sometimes more – audience never seemed to mind.

Maybe they knew that the player himself was not whole, or wholely _there_.

"Elder," Loki greeted Koðrati one evening, quiet and hollow but _speaking_ for once. The hour was late and Avlar had long gone to bed; but, as per usual, Loki himself was seated beside the coffin-like box that held Eðlenstr's body.

He was eyeing the milk-pale body, now, especially the chest area, which was decorated with sets of three lines in both geometrical shapes and rather intricate swirling patterns, and had lost its womanly contour, to his inexplicable sadness. He only looked up when, silently, the huge jötun picked him up and cradled him close.

"Did you wish to ask me something, little one?" the Grand General prompted after a while cuddling him, which seemed to comfort the jötun much more than it did Loki himself.

Loki obliged them. "Why do Avlar and I keep getting milk with our meals?"

"To date, I am yet to find any one of Ýmir's Children who does not like the milk given by their elders," was the amused, fond answer, which still sounded _wrong_ in Loki's ears after all this time, coming from the mouth of the grand general of monsters.

He shook his head. "It… it is from your own _body_ , not a farm animal," he tried to explain. "Why would you share your body like that with a stranger? Even if it is indirectly shared as with the ice chips?"

"I… heard, that there are… wet nurses… in Asgard," was the bemused rejoinder. "Do they not share their own milk with a stranger's child? Directly, at that?"

Loki shook his head more vigorously, getting frustrated; although, like all other emotions he had been experiencing these days, the frustration was only a distant point in his mind, in his heart. "Wet nurses are for _babies_. I am not a baby, and Avlar is even older than I am, at least as counted by years," he pointed out. "We can eat. We do eat, in addition to… sipping on the milk. But your first response is always giving milk. It… happened, also, with… with…," he swallowed hard and tensed up in Koðrati's arms, "with my… caretakers. They never bothered with trying to feed me ordinary meals, especially…."

` _Especially Eðlenstr, the self-proclaimed milk factory, who went as far as tricking me into suckling like a recalcitrant babe, at first,_ ` his mind continued, but the big lump in his throat prevented him from finishing the sentence out loud.

Koðrati's red, glowing eyes were smiling sadly at him, with warmth and intelligence and affection that made the solid crimson orbs so _sentient_. "Tell me the truth, little Loki," they said softly, knowingly, "which meal do you like best, the milk or that tender meat stew you were given this evening?"

Loki looked away.

Koðrati took it as the answer.

They were not wrong.

And then the explanation came, as the Grand General retreated into the sectioned-off part of the large bedroom that contained the cot plus a sleeping Avlar in it.

"Our milk is the best, most luxurious meal that one can have, and neither monetary wealth nor even the highest status in any realm can afford it by force. There is no set age in which one can or cannot receive milk from their loved ones. It is produced only when one holds fondness, however slightest, to the receiver. It applies triply so when it is given directly from breast to mouth.

"At its best, with a proper bond involved in the nursing, especially that of a dam and their womb-child, it is literally the best meal you can have in your existence. Although, sadly, many people take it for granted."

The huge jötun seemed to fall into some internal reminiscence afterwards, absently rocking a contemplative, blanket-wrapped Loki in their arms.

"What is the worst that can come from it?" the captive asked when the Grand General seemed to bestir themself out of the memory lane.

The huge head looked down, and the gaze darkened. – Loki fought _not_ to flinch away from the stormy look. He had asked the question; he would hear the answer.

And the answer did come, mesmerising him in its deadliness, both in context and tone.

"The best poison in all the known realms," Koðrati said, his voice and expression hollow and dead. "It can be produced only once, and it kills the producer as slowly and thoroughly as it does the receiver. But while the receiver can dodge it entirely, or maybe even heal from it with the application of the opposite substance, the producer can _never_ recover from ever making such a substance from their own self. Madness is the ingredient; an utter certainty of love and hatred, melded into one. It tears the person apart long before it tears the body into pieces. – To date, I have only ever seen one sample of such substance, and the husk which produced it. It is that… rare."

Loki looked away, at last, and down to his blanket-covered chest. "Oh," he mumbled, nearly inaudible even to his own ears.

A faintly trembling hand combed his scraggly hair, even as Koðrati collapsed into an ice chair of the huge jötun's own making, seeming to be thoroughly spent by the dark narration somehow.

"You cannot give milk yet, little one. You are not yet old enough, developed enough for such gift," the Grand General said at length, knowingly, as, succumbing to the hypnotic sensation of claws gently scraping across his scalp, Loki began to relax. "You are not recovered enough yet, also, both in body and in mind. How can you give something of yourself when your own self sorely needs it?"

"No," Loki mumbled. "No, I will just poison her. I… do not want that. I thought…. I thought I could. I thought it might help, like it did me."

His captor tensed a little. "Why poison, little Loki?"

"In Asgard…. They…. We…. All we hear in Asgard is how monstrous the jötnar are."

"Are our people not gathered together with Lékonnar Voðen, there? I have been having the impression that they keep close tabs on all the halflings who chose to live there or elsewhere, and those explorers who do not wish – or do not _yet_ wish – to come home. Did you not live with one of ours, or even with Lékonnar Voðen? Surely none of ours would tell you such horrid tales? Even after all the losses in that senseless war?"

"I do not even know who Lékonnar Voðen is."

Koðrati huffed. "Do not play the fool with me, little Loki." Then they seemed to change directions and raised Loki's chin so that their eyes could meet. With all seriousness, they asked, "Do you _hate_ Etta?"

"Why would I think of giving her milk if I hated her? I…. It is all _new_ to me. How can males breastfeed anyone? But if it were possible, and it could help her, I thought…." Loki stuttered from his brief, indignant tirade to an awkward, embarrassed stop.

` _They asked you a valid question,_ ` his mind admonished him, meanwhile. ` _You have just said that_ _ **all**_ _jötnar are monsters… and Eðlenstr_ _ **is**_ _a jötun, however much you wish otherwise._ `

Koðrati let out a sigh. " _This_ ," they said, "truly shows how you were _not_ raised by our people." They tapped the tip of Loki's nose gently with one claw in admonishment and for every emphasis. "Do _not_ bring Asgardian concepts of genders and gender roles here, little one. We, Ýmir's Children, are of only _one_ gender, neither male nor female, although we do have two sexes in each of us.

"Most will pair off or form more complicated child-bearing relationships in adulthood, whether temporary or not, and they will take the role of either the bearer of children or the giver of seed, but those roles are always interchangeable in such relationships. We can even bear a child entirely on our own, should we wish to, although it is usually inadviseable for many reasons.

"For this fact, and for the fact that many of the male sex in other realms are bumbling oafs (in my personal opinion), we consider ourselves as _female_ should we be required to put ourselves in a specific gender, and being called a male is rather an insult to us. I shall leave the more intricate and in-depth explanations to your dam, however, unless they say otherwise."

Loki stared up at them, horrified, breaking up even more from the wall of blankness he had been maintaining for a long time. – How could such a weighty topic diverge into the monsters' version of _the Talk_?

How would Koðrati presume to ask Laufey to explain such a thing to him, anyway? Did the jötnar have ghost-raising ability?

Mortified embarrassment soon turned into a far deadlier kind of mortification, on that thought. – ` _They do not know that I killed my own mother._ `

He fled to the cot on that realisation. He could not bear touching anyone; or being touched, for that matter.

If the Grand General was to execute him _when_ they found out what Loki had done to the king – queen? Monarch? – that the said general seemed to hold so much respect and fondness for, it would be best that the both of them distance themselves from each other beforehand.

A monster – of all monsters – deserved no affection, anyway, even one born from the monarch, and _especially_ one who had _murdered_ the said monarch _in cold blood_.


	21. Broken, Part 2

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: And when a broken mender does try to mend broken things….

21\. Broken, Part 2

A mild commotion broke outside the house, filtering past the various rooms as indiscernible murmur. Loki spared a brief look at the door from his perch on the side wall of the coffin-like box, with Eðlenstr's overly warm, overly dry, limp hand toyed in his own hands; but he otherwise did not spare the possible source of the excitement any mind. Thinking about how to feed his own slowly returning seiðr into the life-support system of the box was more important. He must do it before the Grand General found out about Laufey's death and blamed it on the true culprit: _him_.

Well, judging from the excitement outside, that day might come sooner than he liked.

His mostly disinterested gaze travelled to Avlar, next, who had been blankly regarding the musical instrument set on the opposite corner of the room since some time ago, while sitting sprawled on the floor before its table-like platform. He could not afford doing frivolous things, now, or he would have tried to entertain the boy with that musical piece he had cobbled together.

He _must_ find a way to extend Eðlenstr's life, if nobody else would care.

So, when someone hurried in and it turned out to be a harassed-looking Koðrati, he finally asked the question he had always refrained from asking before: "Where are the contents of my pocket dimension, Elder?"

"Safe," was the grunted answer, as the Grand General swooped in to scoop Avlar up into their arms. "Why?"

"I need the healing stones."

"For?"

Loki tapped softly at the crystalline material he was perched on. "I heard the priests and healers grumbling about spending so much effort for a 'hopeless case'," he said bluntly, his voice hard. "Tell me, Elder, why did they not consider doing so to me? Why do they _never_ consider giving Eðlenstr some milk?"

He tried to resist, when Koðrati also scoopped him up and settled him at the huge jötun's hip like a small child. But then again, he had been feeding the portion of milk he had gotten with his meals into Eðlenstr's half-open mouth all this time, ice shard by ice shard, and the lack of strength boosted by it shows in his struggle.

"You and little Ava are children," the Grand General said simply. And maybe, to the general populace of the jötnar, or even to Koðrati's mind, the decision was indeed that simple. "Your needs must be met before those of your elders. We have discussed about this before."

They strode into the tiny temporary room Loki and Avlar had been sharing these days, then plopped their burdens on the bed. "Now, littles," they announced in the same matter-of-fact tone, "the outermost patrols have reported the presence of a military contingent heading here. From the uniform, it seemed to be from the Royal Forces, not radical militants stealing pieces from the Royal Armoury, but we must be very careful regardless."

They flicked their hand, then, and the tattered travelling attires Loki knew well from the disastrous journey from the ghost village to this place materialised over it. "Wear these again, littles, and keep yourselves hidden in this room," they instructed, as they dumped the clothing on the bed between Loki and Avlar.

"Little Loki," they continued, pinning the addressee with a sombre look, "please listen carefully, and _do as I say_ , for the safety of your own self and that of Ava. Should the contingent prove to be hostile, I shall send a runner here with the password 'Amma calls'. You must flee Tora with Ava, then, and bring the runner with you as guard.

"The window over there," they nodded at the clear pane of ice set over the head of the bed, "is openable and leads to the open garage. Etta keeps a small skiff there, as you may well know it. Activate the navigation system, even if the skiff proves to be no longer operable – I trust you know how to do so? Then search for Tonder on the system and go there. The way should still be clear for you. We have been patrolling Tora's wide circumference day and night since that day.

"I shall send word to the Capital to tell your dam where you are, and I shall go to Tonder myself to fetch the two of you should Ýmir and the Crown permit me to do so."

Koðrati flicked their hand again, and the travelling pack Ovrekka had made for Loki that long time ago materialised over the travelling attires, bulging with who knew what. They dumped all three things over Loki's lap, then bent down to hug and roughly kiss the top of the stunned Asgardian's head. "I do hope this is a false alarm, little one," they murmured into Loki's bird's nest of a hair, "but we must be prepared for the worst. You seemed to have some military training, somehow, so I am entrusting Ava's safety and your own to you. I apologise for this burden, little Loki. I shall try to make amends to you should we be permitted to have the luxury of meeting each other again after this."

Loki's claws dug deep into Koðrati's unprotected back, but the Grand General did not even shift in discomfort. The huge jötun only moved away after they had received a small, hitched hum of acknowledgement and agreement from the addressee.

"Remember, littles, _hide_. Do not take unnecessary risks," was their parting command, accompanied by a hand on Loki's and Avlar's head, before they hurried away without looking back.

They had not said a peep about what was to be Eðlenstr's fate.

Eðlenstr had been Tora's Chief of Security.

Eðlenstr had helped – however unwittingly – to uncover the sleeping cells of the insurgence that had been there since the last war – whenever it had been.

Eðlenstr would be a prime target, aside from Loki himself, the Grand General, the healers, the mages, and maybe also whoever headed the civilian portion of this town.

And out of all of them, even counting Loki in his weakened state like right now, Eðlenstr would be the most vulnerable; the hardest to defend, as well.

But _still_.

Loki dressed himself and Avlar in their respective travelling attires. He dumped the contents of his pack on the cot, then, to be sorted out and added to or removed if necessary.

He was astonished with what the supply consisted of.

The flasks, skins, bottles and vials from his pocket dimension were there, still as full as he had left them, containing liquids and semisolids ranging from general healing paste to strong wine. His stash of non-perishable foods was likewise present, and was in fact added on with a couple of large stone flasks equipped with leather straps, two metal-and-stone containers full of jötun milk made solid, a wooden tub full of strange small pebbles with the look and vague smell of prepared meat cubes shrivelled dry, and a couple sets of eating utensils – a shallow stone bowl and something between a fork and a knife, each.

His _writing utensils_ were even there, additionally wrapped with thick leathers, perhaps for better preservation in the climate unfriendly for Asgard-made things. He did not know what on Yggdrasil would necessitate him _writing_ in a situation like this, or if the jötnar he would encounter were _able_ to read in the first place; but still, the sight and presence of the familiar packets of parchments, quills and ink bottles gave him some comfort – irrational as it was.

What truly astonished him, though, was the return of his precious assortment of blades – his knives, daggers, poniards, and _none_ of them was missing or broken.

And at the bottom of the pack, his container of healing stones lay.

His lips stretched open in a fierce grin, and a low snarl worked its way out of his throat.

He concealed a dozen of his best knives on his person as well as he could, lacking his pocket dimension, arranged the rest of his supplies back in his pack – now with the writing utensils regretably at the bottom – and hefted the container of healing stones in one arm. "Come, Avlar," he told the only other living being in the small niche. "We are staking out our watch in the main room, with Eðlenstr." He swallowed, then forged on, "Let us just leave the pack here. It is close to the route Elder Koðrati wanted us to take, in any case."

Then, his work would begin.

"Look out for any suspicious sound or movement," he had told Avlar once they had been situated.

He had put a hand into the wooden-and-velvet container for the first healing stone, then,

And cursed up a storm, figuratively, when the stone had burnt his fingers, leaving swollen rashes of darker blue on the digits. Fortunately he had had enough caution _not_ to lay the stone on Eðlenstr's chest or something like that.

But now that he was in his æsir form, the stone did not hurt him, although the rashes had transferred, now red against white.

Well, no matter. He had work to do.

His long hours spent beside or on the rim of this contraption had provided him with a more than good enough inkling of how it worked, and paying attention to how the mages had fed their seiðr into it had paid off as well. Now he simply must channel the seiðr stored in the stone through his own body and into the seiðr-sensitive metal panel. The incantation was quite simple, and it barely required any application of seiðr from himself; just enough to kickstart the channeling and then the transfer.

So he began.

The words flowed from his lips smoothly, and the channeling likewise. The transfer made his hand connected to the panel burn, but it was just a small price to pay.

A small price, because the lines of blue light along the body of the coffin-like box were lighting up beautifully and surging clockwise more energetically; and it might be the trick of the low lighting better fitted for a jötun's eyes, but he thought that Eðlenstr's palid skin was gaining a darker tinge.

One stone was spent, degrading into powder in his other hand. He simply reached into the container and began again,

And again, and again, and again, and again….

Somebody patted his shoulder urgently. But the blue lines on the box were thickening, now, and Eðlenstr's skin looked definitely more moist than the sun-kissed-leaf dry it had been. He could not stop! There were still a few healing stones to make use of. And then he was going to haul Eðlenstr – with or without the box – to the skiff alongside himself and Avlar.

His shoulders were shaken, now, from behind. ` _Danger?_ ` But there were still one more healing stone in the container….

With his parched mouth still enchanting the transfering cantrips faithfully, and with one hand still pushing the healing stone against the seiðr panel on the box, he reached down to his belt and yanked out one of his knives. Pivoting in place without letting go of the panel he had been feeding the seiðr from the healing stones into, he raised the knife to defend himself.

An ice blade met it and locked with it, but did not seek to overwhelm his defences.

` _Safe enough. Continue,_ ` his frazzled mind supplied, so he continued.

But then the last healing stone crumbled in his hand, and the last word of the last cantrip fell from his lips in a small croak.

He blinked. He felt very, very dizzy.

The knife in his hand shook, but he did not let go. ` _Danger, still._ `

He lifted his head and looked into the box, assessing Eðlenstr's latest condition.

Or rather, he _tried_ to assess it. ` _Damn. What am I seeing? Why is everything so dark and shaky?_ `

The ice blade flicked up. His knife clattered to the ice floor. ` _Oh damn. The Grand General will be mad at me. We are supposed to flee._ `

It was his last thought, before everything fell into numb silence.


	22. Angrboða, Part 1

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Ear-tickling: a way to make losing a game so very exasperating.

22\. Angrboða, Part 1

Loki was _tired_ of falling unconscious whenever the Norns liked it. He was _weary_ of the lethargy and/or disorientation that followed each bout of unconsciousness, _fed up_ of not knowing how many days and weeks and months _or even years_ he had spent in this Norn-forsaken land, and simply _done_ with not knowing where he was, what the expectations on him might be, or what he could do to survive in this vicious, barbaric place.

He had woken up in vastly different situations attached to a vastly different person each time – except for the one before this – while in this realm, and this was no exception.

 _However_ , the last situation he had remembered was that of uncertainty of militant attack. It added a sharp, bitter flavour to this latest bout of lucidity. – Had he been captured by the rebel faction? What did they want with him? Did they mean to ransom him to whoever succeeded Laufey on the throne of Jötunheim? He would never be free – or end up alive – if so! Who would pay the ransom for the previous king's murderer?

He did not open his eyes, and tried to regulate his breathing to the slow, shallow pattern of slumber. His other senses – sharper than when he had been in his æsir skin – strained to their fullest, gathering information.

His whole frame shook constantly from rough turbulence, as if he was sheltering in an enclosed box that was being battered by a particularly horrible storm. He could hear the roar of the wind from outside, although this box's frame was not rattled in the slightest, but underneath it he could also hear a different kind of roaring, almost a pleasant humming.

The box, if it was indeed a box, felt cramped. He was sharing it with one – no, two? – other… others? And one of them – the much smaller one – both felt and smelled familiar. ` _Avlar?_ ` Was he safe, then? Had Avlar managed to drag his unconscious self away, forsaking the distant blankness the boy had been adopting since that aweful day? What about Eðlenstr?

` _Eðlenstr!_ ` – But the much larger being tangled together with him felt and smelled neither like Eðlenstr nor like Koðrati, nor even like Lúkra – from their breif acquaintanceship in the library that long time ago.

` _Alien. Unknown. Danger. But didn't Koðrati say something about a runner turning into a bodyguard for us? Or is this one a rebel from that militant faction he kept hinting about?_ `

But if he was trapped in here with a rebel, whyever would the said rebel put him _in their lap_ , together with Avlar no less? Because now he could at last detect, faintly underneath all the constant noise, the sounds he had become familiar – even become _accustomed_ to – with his two caretakers, discounting the ever-busy Grand General: steady heartbeats and breaths, pressed gently into his eardrum like soft cotton against skin. There was some kind of leather pressed against his cheek and nearly nonexistent external ear instead of naked skin, but the position was otherwise so familiar that his heart ached with stupid and useless longing.

Stupid, stupid longing, laughingly ludicrous and embarrassing at that, for a young man _and a warrior_ quite nearly on the cusp of adulthood to _crave_ soft physical contact and soothing sounds and emotional attachment like an _infant_ , from monsters no less.

But the deepest, most basic part of his being could not deny that, seated sidewise like this on one broad thigh, with his folded-up legs loosely hugged by a silent Avlar as if they were the little dolls the boy had appropriated twice, all made by a bored and listless Loki, and with his body snuggled against the – nicely cool, open, vulnerable – front of a much larger person, he felt… _right_. He certainly did not feel safe – ` _Not yet, maybe; but just a little… not that much, no._ ` – nor was the cramped position comfortable except to the most visceral, unruly part of his psyche that he would greatly love to ignore, but he felt _right_.

Nobody in Asgard would have ever thought how clingy the jötnar were to each other, for a race of monsters, if he saw from his own reactions alone thus far. He himself would not have ever thought so in his wildest, darkest imaginings.

But reality was a cruel mistress indeed.

And now that he was at last awake, his body demanded both sustenance and recycling most insistently.

Plus, he – simply, absolutely – _must_ know what had happened with Eðlenstr. He had sacrificed so much! He _deserved_ to know that much, in return.

So he took a gamble, and permitted himself to stir a little and blink his eyes open.

He did not expect the dry chuckle and drier words that welcomed him, spoken in Allspeak from somewhere above his head and reverberating in the chest half of his face was pressed against: "What information did you gain in that little intelligence gathering of yours just now, child?"

"What makes you think I would like to tell you?" was his automatic reply, mumbled through the lethargy that lingered in every pore of his being.

"Spicy," was the dry remark given in turn. "And here I thought you were curious of what facts you might confirm from your observation."

` _Tempting._ ` But Loki did not succumb. He had used this very tactic, as crude as it was, so many times before, on so many people from so many walks of life.

Instead, he focused his eyes and attention, using the simple single lines and shapes decorating Avlar's – surprisingly open-eyed – sleeping face as anchor, then shifted further to look round.

 _Tried_ to, anyway.

He realised then, that both he and Avlar were _tethered_ to this huge jötun using a pair of crossed slings made of ice – the huge jötun's ice, from the inexplicable feel of it. His arms were also trapped, neatly arranged to be hugging himself: crossed against each other in between his chest and folded-up legs, with palms flat against his ribs at either side.

And _none_ of his knives was anywhere to be felt round his waist, where he had hung them before, although he was still clad in his battered travelling attire Ovrekka had made for him those ages ago.

His captor was subtle and clever.

He looked at the bands of ice crossed on the middle between his body and Avlar's, concentrated, tried to push at it by will alone, which Ovrekka had said would be enough for working his own ice.

But then, it had been _ages_ since he had last tried to exercise that particular – newly found – ability of his, and the latest attempt had not given him any good result in any case.

This effort, it fell even shorter from his target, as if he were a boastful new archer attempting his first shot directly with a great longbow, instead of a much smaller and suppler beginner bow.

Worse, he got the niggling sense that his captor was silently _amused_ regarding this overshot attempt of his.

 _Even worse_ , the suspicion was proven true not a moment after, when the said captor commented mildly on the "toothless spike of seiðr" and asked if he was done with his temper tantrum yet.

To those words, Loki simply gritted his teeth and bore the teasing in silence.

And to _that_ reaction, his captor said approvingly, with no levity to be found in their voice, "Good."

Loki _bristled_. He had _always_ been silent in Asgard, when he had wished – no, _needed_ – to speak. He had _always_ been the butt of jokes delivered by Thor and that oaf's friends, and he had been accused of being _wicked_ when he had retaliated.

No more. No longer.

"What do you want with me?" he snarled.

His captor sighed in resignation, incongruously. "To be calm and silent, for now," they grumbled nearly under their breath. "I need to concentrate on steering this thing. I do not fancy driving through a hailstorm with three little snowflakes in tow, so we must get away from here long before that, and that does require speed, that I will not be able to safely reach if you persist to be difficult."

` _Driving…. So we are most likely in a transport of some kind, now, running at full tilt against the wind._ ` "Where?"

"Home."

"I had a home already," Loki pointed out, bluffing.

His captor _snorted_. Loki had not even imagined a monster's throat could let out a snort; just grunts and snarls and growls and yelps and screams… and purring, like a distant warm – if embarrassing – memory provided him.

"Where?" the huge, _infuriating_ jötun returned the question, in perfect imitation of Loki's own tone and word _and even inflection_.

"Now you do not deign me with a reply, while I already indulged you so much. How rude. Did your parents not teach you manners?" the said infuriating monster continued after a long pause, in which Loki wished _dearly_ that he could clench his fists and drove them into _that_ unprotected belly. His teeth – black and sharper now than when in his æsir form – _ached_ with the returning teasing tone.

Worse, one huge finger then darted into his other ear that was not pressed against this jötun's chest, and _twisted_ inside of it, creating a tickling sensation that he had not prepared to guard against. He yelped and squirmed, futilely trying to shake the offending finger off when it came for a second round barely a moment after… and then a third… and then a fourth.

"Stop it!" he squawked at last, barely restraining himself from laughing. He was not a _toddler_ , to be played so!

The jötun shushed him, in response, and patted a stirring Avlar's head with the same hand. "Hmm. Not only rude, but also inconsiderate," they remarked, then, tone unimpressed. "Was it necessary to bother your little friend so, eh, little ice shard?"

"You…. You…," Loki spluttered, incensed. He was unbelievably _cornered_ , in a game of subtleties at that, which was usually his forté – nay, his _speciality_.

To add acid into the open wound that was his pride, that utter _git_ tickled his ear again.


	23. Angrboða, Part 2

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Which one is duty? Which one is care? Which one is manipulation? Which one is humiliation? – For one who is never a child, how does it feel, being considered a child?

23\. Angrboða, Part 2

Loki's captor slowed their transport into an eventual halt after a long, long while of nearly constant teasing and needling and speeding against the wind, and he could not be more relieved about it. The hilly view outside showed a surprising amount of plantlife, if just squat, sturdy-looking bushes with purple-green narrow leaves clumped together for protection from the elements, and maybe also over-greedy herbivores, and it was a sight for sore eyes.

The said captor did not immediately exit the transport, however. Instead,four huge jötnar materialised as though from thin air from somewhere behind it – probably hiding at the back of the transport all this time, separated from them by a divider – and scouted out the parameters like seasoned travellers – no, _warriors_ , soldiers – about to set up a camp. The infuriating, yet-unnamed jötun keeping him captive and tortured was not idly waiting for their men to gave the all-well indication, however. They observed the four outside like a general watching over the execution of his will, but they also looked about for themself from their seat, seeming to intently search for something by sight alone.

When the all-well indication came, by way of a hand-sign that Loki nearly did not catch with how subtle it surprisingly was, he was even more surprised to find that the bands of ice that had been tethering both him and Avlar to the huge jötun silently dissolved into crystalline powder, then into nothing. – He was free, then? Just so?

The signaller of the all-well indication opened the door to the left of the steering panel, and the huge jötun – who was actually _less huge_ than the signaller, shockingly, now he could see – slid outside of their seat, bringing their two captives with them. No gratitude or compliment was spoken. Instead, an instruction – nay, a _command_ – was thrown over one shoulder as the apparent leader walked away to the spot they had picked earlier, which was the practically hidden mouth of a footpath among the bushes: "Secure the skiff. Bring the children's packs with you. They severely need a bath."

But still, Loki _was not let go_. Neither was Avlar, for that matter; but… but….

"I can walk, you know," he remarked in his most casual, indifferent manner, as the jötun brought him and Avlar yet farther away from the transport, which he could see – from beyond his captor's shoulder – now as indeed a skiff: a rather small one at that for jötun standards, painted a subdued but warm yellow, almost the colour of Jötunheim's sunlight, and _so very familiar_.

"I can tell, you know," was the rejoinder, given – _yet again_ – in the same tone and inflection, if not the wording.

"Tell what?" he gritted out. – That shoulder, not wholely protected by the low-necked, collarless leather vest his captor was wearing, was so, so, so tempting for a not-so-small bite….

"Many things," was the flippant answer.

And then they let a newly awake but still-silent Avlar slide down to the ground, _but not Loki_.

"Put me down!" – ` _Of all the indignities–!_ `

"Ah, my judgement stands uncontested, child. You are one rude little ice shard indeed, so prickly. Did you learn it from… _home_?" his captor _crooned_ , with a bite of _something_ in their otherwise playful, somewhat mocking words. Then, after a thoughtful pause, musingly and more seriously, they said slowly, "Eh, but you were not this cranky the last time we met, now I realise. You were a timid, terrified thing, rather. Đinyé has lots to answer for, hmm? Including that geas they must have put on you to cloud your identity from our perceptions…. Fié will be absolutely _furious_ …. Not that I can fault them for that. Đinyé has no business clouding your identity from your own dam. Oh my."

And, of all things to do, the infuriating, maddenning, irksome, sly, quirky, quippy _git_ put their arms round Loki _and cuddled him close as if to some rag doll_.

Loki did bite that tempting shoulder, now, _hard_.

He earned an equally hard wrap – or so it felt – on his head for that, and barely stifled a groan from the migraine it caused.

"Just for that, little wolfcub, you have lost the privelege to bathe yourself; and that includes _both_ undressing and redressing," his captor told him sternly. "You might want to follow Ava's _good_ example next time."

Loki just stared into the insufferable monster's twinkling red eyes and gave them his best glare, however cross-eyed it was from the new but persistent migraine.

To say that Loki was mortified would be a vast understatement.

His captor had _not_ jested about the threat of bathing him like a baby.

The three of them had arrived at a small, rushing, semi-underground stream housed in a spacious cave, accessible through a small path, and his captor only kept an eye out for Avlar as the boy stripped himself and took a dunking in the rush of icy water, with occasional promptings as needed.

But Loki? Oh no, no, sir; he had lost the privelege that had never been known, let alone spoken about.

Thor and his goons would have laughed themselves sick if they could have seen this: a competent warrior and seiðr user who had never been shy about much, and he was now squealing and squirming madly on the pebbly bank that had been iced over with rough-surface pattern, trying to get away or at least fight back as his unknown – _huge_ – jötun captor, having stripped themself and him and given both a dunking, proceeded to lather him briskly and thoroughly from head to foot with a mild-scented chunk of frozen oil.

Then again, maybe Heimdall was watching, and laughing himself sick on this, believing it a just punishment for Loki having iced him up however many months or years ago.

"Stop it! You are assaulting me!" the beleaguered captive cried out at last, as his captor went south in rubbing and scrubbing the oil.

And, miraculously, the scrubbing hand – quick and well practised in its indifference in cleaning him up, Loki had to admit – stopped _just_ before it reached his – yet alien, yet unexplored – crotch.

"Stop dramatising," came the exasperated, somewhat harsh retort, although the hand now wiping at his cheeks was gentle and not at all brusque as when it had scrubbed him down. "You behave as if I were raping you, not _giving you a severely needed bath_. Did you not notice the smell all about you and Ava, child? I am _not_ about to present the both of you to Fié in such a state, _especially you_."

Loki glared, through distorted vision and burning eyes, and made his opinion clear on that regard in such manner.

His captor huffed…

…And simply continued on their way, regardless of Loki's renewed struggle.

"It's as if you never got – or even _asked for_ – a cuddle-bath all your short life, little snowflake," they complained, grunting, when Loki, yowling, attempted to knee them in the groin. "I do hope it's not the case. I will not be able to save my baby from the repercussions, if so, and Fié will be in the right to be extra wrathful."

` _This again._ ` "I know nobody with any of those names," Loki gritted out, now trying to eel himself away to the stream, as his captor attended to his left leg, hugging it close – and half sitting on the right leg – while rubbing and scrubbing it down with the chunk of frozen oil… which, he had to admit, felt pleasantly smooth and fresh and light on his skin.

A thick, sturdy band of ice materialised over his torso, just so, and tethered him firmly to the rough – now splattered with oil – surface of the same make by way of a sturdy ice rope.

"Then I will have to kidnap Đinyé from their workplace and march them to their nar, in due time," his captor grumped, meanwhile, sounding exasperated and aggrieved; and, most important of all, _ignoring Loki's demand for them to let go of him_. "I shall have you there to placate Fié first, though, so my baby will have a greater chance to live… however angry and irritated I am with them right now. – _Ava_ , don't just sit there, snowflake. Your hair has gotten dry again. Come wait in the water. I will attend you once I am done with this screechy eel." They flicked a glance at the silhouette of Avlar sitting some distance away down the stream, then darted a hand up to tap Loki's nose with the tip of a finger, before resuming their ministration on his leg. "Now, behave, you little brat. We do not have much time. I want to spend what time we have _resting_ , not wrestling you for a bath. _Honestly_ , you are worse than little Fié in a tantrum, and they were _five-hundred_ at that time."

" _Who_ is Fié?" Loki tried another tactic now, distracting himself from the strangely ticklish sensation in between his toes, as the sole of his foot was now being scrubbed down. "Who are you, anyway?" Not the best distraction attempt that he could usually come up with; but, well, he could not think well with the torture going on round his left foot and the sheer surreality of being manhandled into an oilbath, not to mention his lingering exhaustion from _before_ he had fallen unconscious last time, which was _not_ yet shunned away by any kind of sustenance.

A throaty, absent-minded hum answered him, _but just that_. His captor continued with that torturous, torturously meticulous scrubbing, and Loki's knee began to jerk in response to the tickling sensation, no longer distracted by the expectation of an answer.

He got a reprieve when his captor switched to the other leg. But it was a very short one.

A soft whine escaped his gritted teeth when those damn fingers arrived at the sole of his other foot _and lingered there_. His attempt to jerk his leg free ended up being just a series of twitchy spasms, and his effort to break free from the ice tether likewise.

And then one finger _twisted_ in the space between his big toe and second toe, and he _squealed_.

His captor chuckled. "A tough little wolfcub, hmm?"

Loki twisted within his icy confines, glared up at the grinning face of the monstrous git that had been torturing him, and spat out recklessly, driven by frustration and exhaustion as much as confusion, even as he tried mightily not to laugh given the ongoing ticklish sensation in between his toes, "What use do you gain in toying with me in these childish ways?"

Some of the amusement and glee fled the countenance of the broad-faced, shaven-headed jötun, and a pointed look deflected the glare back at the weary sender. "To make you laugh, maybe?" they drawled. "What other use would I have, do you think? If you would kindly recall, little áðkonnar, I haven't bathed your little friend over there yet, let alone myself. I am certainly not in the mood for any weighty conversation at present, being still so filthy and faced with such responsibilities."

"But _why_ –?!" Loki's breath hitched now, as those damn hands return further up his leg and thoughtfully ran along the back of his knee. "Let me _go_!" – If only he could snap the words out, instead of whining and whimpering them, in the desperate effort _not_ to laugh….

His captor huffed, again. "No fun," they declared petulantly.

And then, just as the ice tether confining Loki to the riverbank dissolved, they captured him in a tackling embrace _and cuddled him again_.

And then, the both of them toppled into the stream with a huge splash.

Icy water rushed into Loki's lungs, _then went back out again, naturally, as if breathing_ , and he found that he was _not_ drowning, even as his – _mad, mad, mad_ – captor kept him under, scrubbing him down again from head to foot a head's span _below_ the water surface.

When they _at long last_ surfaced, Loki could only stand spluttering and coughing for a while, leaning heavily against the riverbank with three quarters of his body still submerged in the rushing currents, dumbfounded.

"Stop dramatising, little eel," called his captor, who was now somehow – ` _So quickly!_ ` – some distance away down the stream, lathering a pliant Avlar with oil and applying the same routine they had done to him earlier.

Loki was spluttering on another thing entirely, now.

Not water, but _words_.

" _Dramatising_!" he screeched at last, ignoring how his yell echoed damply, quite audible even while competing with the ever-rumbling sound of the stream. "You were _drowning_ me!"

"Did you drown?" was the lazy rebuttal. "Did you find your lungs aching, now?"

His captor did not even give him the courtesy of looking at him. They were smiling fondly at Avlar, cuddling the snuggling boy close while rubbing oil onto the said boy's back.

Cuddle-bath, indeed.

Loki looked away, and did not deign the semi retorical question with an answer of any kind.

Something _ached_ deep in his chest on witnessing such a scene; something that he refused to label, nor name the source of.


	24. Angrboða, Part 3

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: When one trickles, one floods. Secrets and veiled truths are no exception to this.

24\. Angrboða, Part 3

Loki was now fully awake, fresh from the admitedly good if trying bath, and presentable for once in seemingly a very, very long time, with his hair trimmed and combed back using supplies his captor had pulled from out of nowhere. He had been stuffed into something that was surprisingly so very soft and comfortable – if a little worne – while still resembling his old travelling attire, which was now nowhere to be found. And, presently, he was cocooned in a huge, worn-soft blanket which was tied together with a little bit of his captor's ice.

Clever. Tying him up without binding him to anything.

Irksome, too, because Avlar was _totally free_. The boy was seated nearby on the same icy 'picnic blanket' that Loki himself and their packs were occupying, akin to that Ovrekka had once pulled off when they had yet retained some will and energy to do so in that desperate, disastrous journey a long time ago.

But he also could not deny that he felt _totally at home_ , somehow, in some way, ridiculously. There must be something in the clothing – supple but strong leathers with good but unobtrusive stitching, died pale green, with soft silky fabric as its inner lining – or in this fluffy light-grey blanket that could easily cover his captor from head to toe without leaving anything out, for him to feel this irrational sensation. – A subtle spell? Some hallucinogenic powder?

He only stirred when his captor strode back to the camp from where the skiff was parked, a small distance away. They spoke quietly with the four other huge jötnar who had been standing at the edge of the camp, occasionally throwing a look at him and Avlar down on the ground. And now he could see – truly _see_ – that the five of them wore the same uniform leathers of a black skirt-like loincloth, a silvery pouch belt, a black sleeveless, collarless shirt without any laces with low cut at the neck and back and two crests tooled in red on the left and right on the front, and a silvery skullcap with yet another symbol at the front, done in black-and-blue tooling.

More importantly, there were subtle variations on his captor's uniform – the thin purple-green band along the rim of the skullcap, the thin, short silver-and-gold braided leather stitched on each shoulder, the decorative silver stitching along the hemline of the whole uniform….

And most importantly, his captor seemed to bear the difference in quiet strength and graceful power; something that not even Koðrati had achieved, or maybe just had not shown in his presence. And the deference the four other jötnar showed them was… was….

Suffice to say, it was _all_ that he could do, _not_ to give a deferential bow of his own, when the said jötun at last approached the patch of flat, smooth, crystalline ice he and Avlar had been seated on. Because the gait, the air of quiet dignity, the slow but sure steps….

` _Norns damn it._ ` – Clutching at the blanket from inside, he took a bow.

That monster looked all too graceful, all too dignified, _all too much like Odin_ for a monster.

He and Avlar were not in the clutches of some radical, subversive militant group, apparently. No, they could not be. This was… different. The underlings were too trained, too disciplined, too quiet, too… civilised. And their leader….

Their leader was letting out a sharp, _very displeased-sounding_ hiss.

Loki stiffened, fighting _not_ to flinch, caught still in a bow.

He did not expect what came out of the jötun's mouth next.

"Straighten up, youngling."

Shocked, pained, _simmering with fury_.

"You do not know how to play, but you know how to _grovel_?! What did Voðen do to you?"

` _Voðen. – Đinyé? – Lékonnar Voðen. – If 'konnar' means 'king', then 'lékonnar' must mean something pretty close to it – 'prince'? But if this one dares to so freely speak a prince's name in fury, with such an 'I am your father so obey me boy' tone, then…._ `

"Býkonnar Angrboða," he breathed, stunned and overwhelmed and _so very confused_. – That was the last name associated with "konnar" that he knew, thus far; the name of someone that might have more power and rank than the Voðen that was currently castigated so severely in absentia; also the name that had been mentioned several times – several times more than Laufey's name, even.

And, in response, the giant looming before him _roared_ in wordless rage to the sky, with huge fists clenched and all; maybe even with mouth snarled open and sharp black teeth bared, quite like the barbaric monster æsir stories always portrayed about the jötnar, except when they talked about delicate, petite ice maidens.

Avlar darted to behind him, laying convulsing hands on his shoulders as if ready to yank him back somewhere, anywhere. However, Loki could do nothing but freeze on the spot, and not because he was bundled in the blanket at that.

He realised now, he had _never_ , in his unwitting, unwilling stay on Jötunheim thus far, heard a jötun roar like that, at him or anybody else. Not even the rude, ruthless one who had barred his little, pitiful company from entering that village between the ghost town and the midway point.

He had not properly appreciated the _lack_ of it thus far.

His captor – Býkonnar Angrboða? – whoever they was – was gone, abruptly and – _all too frighteningly_ – silently, and Loki could detect the hasty, crude, painfully obvious construction of silencing ward afar not half a moment after.

The four underlings – personal bodyguards? Random foot soldiers of the Crown? _Royal guards_? – spared him and Avlar a glance, but then separated to their apparently previously assigned posts: two guarding the skiff for whatever reason and two others prowling the parameters of their camp in ever widening circles.

The only ones left in the camp proper were a largish patch of smooth, level ice that nonetheless felt pleasantly like a textured picnic blanket, two runts – the larger of whom was hunkering down behind the smaller – and a couple of painfully recogniseable packs parked on the edge of the said "picnic blanket," all drowned in an awkward, tense silence.

It reminded Loki of the increasingly miserable and minimalistic camp he had made with his companions in that journey so long time ago, before they had been too exhausted and jaded to make a camp at all, before their fragile comradeship had been broken – maybe forever – by a series of bad turns of events.

He had never thought he would have _missed_ jötnar – _monsters_.

Then again, he had never thought he would have so readily been _accustomed_ to peaceable – or at least not roaring like a wounded nesting bilgesnipe – jötnar, not until it was yet another piece of the past he rued.

Avlar came out from behind him after a long while, skittish like a spooked colt, and darted towards the packs only to drag them to where Loki was still seated, now bowed in his fluffy prison for an almost entirely different reason from before. The boy did nothing with those large, bulging items for a long moment, choosing to scrutinise Loki instead, but in the end opened his own pack and rummaged for what turned out to be a stone containers full of the jötun milk-shards.

Loki shook his head emphatically when the open container was silently proffered to under his nose.

He was too nauseated with fear _of the jötnar_ , again, to stomach anything, let alone those that came from them, especially if _literally_ so.

And the milk in ice-shard form, it reminded him _too much_ of the gentle care and crooning sweet words and unconditional acceptance that had welcomed him _here_ all too briefly, of all that he had so greedily and thoughtlessly taken without any shred of appreciation, let alone gratitude.

And the bumbling warm love that _yet another_ had showered on him: equally unconditional, equally whole-hearted, scorned for its earnestness and honesty….

He felt _sick_ , and the sickness clawed his innards mercilessly, inescapable – because how could he escape _himself_.

Jötunheim's version of "nighttime" had long fallen, and a fierce, bitter wind had been blowing steadily through the landscape for the better part of it, making Loki grudgingly grateful for the protection of the head-to-foot travelling attire that was not his own doubled with his fluffy prison. His stomach had been protesting the lack of nourishment ever since he had awoken from his latest bout of unconciousness, and his body had been punishing him for such with weakness of muscles and seiðr and thus less protection against the perpetual cold of the harsh realm; but still, until now the thought of touching a meal, especially something prepared by the jötnar, was yet repulsive for him.

Ironic, that he found himself unable to even _think_ of parting with both the travelling attire and the blanket, despite the fact that they were of most probably jötun make, and maybe even a jötun's hand-me-down.

He felt too at home with them, somehow, for that to happen.

A pair of huge, muscled, powerful arms suddenly and silently picked him up and wrapped themselves sidewise round his cocooned self, as if a child seeking solace from a favourite squishy toy, or a mother cuddling her infant, just as cold-and-hunger-induced drowsiness began to plague him. The expansive, muscled torso the arms were attached to trembled faintly but ceaselessly, yet the cradling embrace felt neither weak nor crushing.

A moment after, the bit of ice holding the cocoon together dissolved, and it was only the gently cradling arms that barred him from freedom.

Still, he dared not move even a nail's breadth anywhere, and refused to look up into his captor's eyes, let alone screamed for help that would never come, although he could acutely feel a heavy gaze boring down on him.

And then his captor rumbled lowly, in their previous calm tone but without the levity that Loki had not realised had been there till it became absent, "Ask your questions, child. I cannot guarantee that I can answer all you wish to know; for various reasons, but for what I can answer, I shall answer with the truth as I know it."

The faint tremor racking the huge, muscled frame enveloping him was not condusive for questions, Loki thought. He could be so easily crushed within this living cage, should his captor deem his questions overly rude or upsetting. But would the huge jötun consider his lack of questions offensive instead? Besides, this was the chance he had been waiting for so long, was it not? _Nobody_ had ever offered such a generous boon to him here; not either of his caretakers, nor his previous travelling companions, nor the Grand General, not even Lúkra – who had been supposed to _educate_ him in the first place, he had assumed. Such a chance had been a rare thing even before he had been shucked off into this land of monsters, at that, come to think of it again.

Well, he had to admit, if only to himself, that at times he could be as reckless as Thor was.

"Who are you?" he whispered, with his eyes locked on the left-hand symbol on the front of his captor's vest.

"Are you addressing me or your House's crest, child?" The retorical question sounded tired and a smidge exasperated, not pretending at all to be indifferent, although still in a level enough tone that Loki did not worry overmuch.

"My House's crest?" he echoed, intrigued and apprehensive all at once.

"Your House's crest," his captor affirmed, but said no further.

Loki fought _not_ to show any sign of exasperation. He was _not_ going to fail at this game, if nothing else. To that aim, he did not look up as implicitly requested, either.

And to that move, his captor let out a – very undignified – snort.

Caught off guard and very much startled, he looked up at last, wide-eyed.

A pair of mellow garnet eyes met his, deeper red than all that he had seen or glimpsed thus far but crystalline clear, beautiful in their own right _and ever so intelligent_.

They were crinkled slightly at the edges in wry, subdued mirth.

He looked back down, huffing.

"Are you so opposed to your own kind that you would not even meet your interlocutor's eyes, child? Will our relationship be forever filled with tricks and secrets and avoidance?" His captor sounded as agrieved as before they had bellowed to the sky like a maddened bull, but thankfully more tired than angry.

Loki stiffened, nonetheless. To cover up the telling reaction, he moved about, as if he was torn between snuggling deeper or squirming free of the blanket.

He froze, again, when his neck was caught firmly in the crook of the giant's elbow. With how muscly and strong the arm felt, parting his head from his shoulders like a ripe cluster of amna from its softened fruit-twig would be rather easy.

They were at an impasse once more.

His captor seemed to realise that at the same time, for they then said, after a deep sigh that seemed to radiate exhaustion and even transfer some to their captive, "What about this? You introduce yourself to me, and I shall in turn introduce myself to you?"

"What do you know of me?" he parried.

"Do you promise to speak the truth as you know it, and the _whole_ of it?" was the returned stipulation, offered as his captor sought to meet his eyes, wherever the latters roamed.

Loki could not help it. He let out a whine of frustration. – Thirsty, hungry, thwarted at every turn, treated like a baby _and_ an adult at the same time, _while_ being surrounded by the feel of something – or someone? – that his basest instincts seemed to have known _and welcomed_ , and now being cornered by a question with no good answer, it was too much of a chore to maintain the image of an implacable, respectable adult ás.

It had already been far too late for that, anyhow, by now. _Weeks_ too late, judging from the scattered information he had gotten and his own calculation about the time.

So, in the end, as realisation set in, he just went all out.

He gave his captor the eye contact they had been chasing after and boldly replied, "Are you going to kill me afterwards? I would rather live. Too many people have died for me to forsake life by now."

His captor frowned, thought for a moment, then said, "It depends on your crimes… and also what your dam and monarch will say."

At least they were honest about it, as they had promised earlier.

So, fed up with his own evasions, his own deceptions, his own half-truths and everything else, Loki spoke,

And spoke, and spoke, and spoke….


	25. Homeward, Part 1

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: A promise is a promise is a promise. But there are shades and interpretations to a promise, too. And still, how would a beleaguered faux ás with large chunks of information missing, topped up with an askew sense of expectation, make of such a promise?

25\. Homeward, Part 1

Being abandoned _once more_ would have been the _least_ – the most lenient – of all possible responses to the confession, Loki knew it well. After all, he, _as second heir to the throne_ , had caused the death of a few jötnar for the sake of disrupting Thor's coronation; he, _as King of Asgard_ , had both tricked and killed Laufey – _King of Jötunheim_ – in a desperate bid for Odin's approval; and he, in the proceeding madness, had sought to destroy Jötunheim using the Bifrost. He, _Laufey's son_ , had been raised wholely æsir, and thus viewed the jötnar as monsters fit for merciless slaughter, living on a barren, icy wasteland as savages ever thirsty for war.

Being abandoned should not hurt. It should relieve him instead, being spared the immediate death sentence, allowing him some little chance to flee elsewhere and hide – maybe forever.

It should.

It _didn't_.

His captor had gone tenser and tenser further into his "introduction;" and the tenser they had been, the more their cradling embrace had felt like both a cage and a crushing devise for a death sentence. He had been shucked off like some slimy, leaky, highly odorous rubbish, then, at the end of that torturous spill; and there he still lay, dazed and impossibly hurt, an unknown length of time afterwards, on the ice beside a peacefully sleeping Avlar, whose eyes were half open but faraway.

` _What possessed me, to say all that?_ `

He looked up blankly at the light golden sky, with the sun just a pinprick of intense light near… was it the west? Or the east? Or the north? Or the south?… and wallowed in homesickness for the expanse he had beheld for more than a thousand years before all this, before his life had been turned upside down and inside out so suddenly and so cruelly.

` _What made me talk, when not even Mother –_ _ **Frigga**_ _– had been aware of these thoughts, towards the end?_ `

He turned away from the sky and curled deeper into his now askew cocoon, vainly trying to flee from _everything_ , vainly trying to find comfort in the strange feeling and scent that had calmed him so much, that had provided him home away from home.

Maybe they had calmed him _too much_ , anchored him too firmly. But even as the thought passed across the fore of his mind, he _still_ helplessly buried his face into the blanket, into the travelling attire not of his own that he had been clad in after the forceful bath in that stream, into the strange sensation of home and safety and bone-deep familiarity that had been haunting him all this time. He was pursuing something intangible, something elusive, something missing that he had never known as missing beforehand,

Something that made his heart _ache_ with longing – and now, loneliness.

What – or _who_ – could have such a grip on the deepest part of his being, the place that he had not even been aware was _there_? Or was this simply a particularly powerful Working of seiðr woven by a select few talented mages?

If the last possibility was the truth, then he, one of the greatest sorcerers in the Nine Realms, had been hoodwinked by spellworked – by his own speciality – _twice_ in this land of monsters.

Clever, clever monsters.

Even now, his body and heart urged him to just _lie there_ , passive like a lamb for the slaughter, enjoying the last moments that he had by curling up in this tiny home, with the illusion of safety and love that somebody – or a group of somebodies – had crafted for his entrapment.

His mind wished to rebel, to fight back, so very much.

It was defeated, yet again.

But it did not retreat without scoring a little bit of victory, paltry as it was:

He managed to gather the will to scrape himself off the icy picnic blanket and drag himself to the skiff, blanket and all. And there, on the enclosed back of it, guarded by two of the four remaining adult jötnar, he found the coffin-like box containing Eðlenstr's – _still living_ – body.

His captor had had mercy – and even _consideration_ – for his latest – _and last_ , most likely – caretaker. It was good and heartening to know.

He set himself up on the far corner at the foot of the blue-light-wreathed open container: leaning back and sidewise against the bulkhead of the skiff, perched on top of the shorter side of the box, with his legs stretched over the corner like the last line of a triangle, and with his feet planted on the longer side opposite of where he had clambered in. This way, he removed the inclination to keep watch over the side entrance of the skiff for himself, could look at Eðlenstr's face without having to strain his neck, and was able to do both in relative comfort.

The warmth of the land's "night," doubled with the head-to-foot travelling attire and tripled with the luffy blanket, sent him into a heat-induced nap.

The nap was more than just a nap, it turned out. Loki woke up an indeterminate time later, finding himself once more seated in his captor's lap with Avlar, in the very same position as yesterday – ` _Was it really just yesterday? Did I miss more days, like before?_ ` – and sans the blanket he had taken a nap under. He had been woken up by a sharp banking the skiff had taken, apparently, because now he found they were flying – at breakneck speed – in between narrow cliffs and valleys.

He did not envy Avlar – who faced forward unlike him – whatsoever, when they took yet another hairpin bend not long after, _without slowing down_.

That boy looked terrified.

Their next camp seemed to be high up on a mountainside, judging from how they had been steadily climbing all this time, in addition to weaving between tight spaces. The air was drier and cooler up here, in a small rocky plateau fenced on three sides by nothing but rocks; more a rocky nook on a cliffside than anything, actually.

The four jötnar guards scouted the plateau first, leaping out from the hovering skiff. This time they were equipped with some kind of tool each, Loki could see, which glinted weakly under the sunlight; something that regularly emitted bursts of energy, which purpose might be to detect concealment or, alternatively, to test the firmness of the ground at their chosen campsite. The skiff was parked by the innermost side of the patch of level ground, opposite their way in, once the all-well sign was given, maybe by the same guard as yesterday. Unlike yesterday, however, the bathing ordeal was _thankfully_ absent.

Well, but also unlike yesterday, once the frost giants' version of a picnic blanket had been laid out a small distance away, and the guards had gone to their posts, and the packs had been deposited on the square of ice alongside Avlar and Loki himself, the leader of the adult jötnar told Avlar – in a rather stiff manner so different from their joviality yesterday – to stay put alone for a while, before simply plucking Loki back up into their arms and carrying him back to the skiff.

To the back of it, to be exact, and _inside_ of it.

Now Loki knew why the jötun leader had ordered those guards to keep watch on all corners of their camp, not at all close to the skiff….

But he still did not know _why_ the jötun chose this place to… ` _…Well, to do_ _ **what**_ _, exactly? What is this giant going to do to me?_ _ **Or to Eðlenstr**_ _?_ `

Because, for a very long, awkward moment, he was just perched on the side of Eðlenstr's boxy lifeline, with his feet firmly planted on the limited space of decking between the box and the open door, facing the said giant who stood just outside.

There was little space for that hulking adult beast to fit inside the elongated back of the skiff, anyway, with most of the available surface taken by the coffin-like box, which in Asgard might be equal in some respect to the life-support ward Odin used in his Sleeps. He could see how the four guards could have fitted themselves at the head and the foot of the open container, watching out even as the skiff was speeding by, since there were more available spaces there; but entering through the middle opening at the side like this, the giant would be too bulky to worm their way to either place.

Well, they _could_ , if they would employ some physical creativity; yet somehow, he doubted such a dignified specimen astonishing for a brutish race – when they were not goofing out and cuddling random runts, that was – would deign to crawl and scramble and hop to either of those spots to achieve just a little bit more comfort, especially when being witnessed by someone who had foolishly confessed himself as the enemy.

And now, the distraction failed, because it returned to the earlier point of thought.

The Norns' way to nudge him to get along with the line of his Thread, maybe.

So he took a deep breath, braced himself inwardly, and raised his eyes to meet those of his captor,

Who looked back at him with grim approval and barely hidden darkness – of thoughts, of emotions, he dared not guess.

His heart stuttered in his chest. ` _This is it, then?_ `

And the beast said, "Well-met, Loki Laufey-childe; or rather, _Loptr_ Laufey-childe. I am Angrboða Únraða-childe; First Regent of Ýmirheim; spouse of the late Bestla Bergelmir-childe, elder womb-sibling of Laufey Bergelmir-childe, Monarch of Ýmirheim."

Loki's thoughts snagged on the word "Regent," discarding the odd manner of the introduction that he had thought he would never get from his captor.

` _Regent: replacement of a monarch for a time. – Ymirheim equals Jötunheim? – Laufey is dead, so… so…? This giant…. Spouse of…. But…._ `

"What do you want?" he whispered through dry everything – throat, mouth, tongue, lips….

If it were even possible, the gaze of the jötun – Regent Angrboða? _King_ Angrboða, now? – turned darker, more menacing. And now Loki could _feel_ the powerful, potant seiðr wreathing the hulking beast's form, lending additional size and grandure to it, as unnecessary as it was to such a fearsome figure,

And all to face such a defeated foe. Because he was acutely aware – and he was sure Angrboða was, likewise – that his own seiðr had been wounded from the frequent and rapid depletions he had been experiencing since being shucked off onto this harsh, barren land, and also from whatever cruel Working those purported rebels had put on him some time recently. No blades, no seiðr, bodily exhausted still, drugged up with this fake feeling of home and safety and warmth, lacking pertinent information to weave his words round – he was as toothless and powerless as a newborn babe.

And he could do nothing but _cringe_ when the jötun breathed out, verbally expressing the darkness that had been just a silent carving on their broad, not-so-ridged face, "I want many, many things."

He was Laufey's son. Was he going to be made a puppet king of Jötunheim? Or was Angrboða going to kill him instead? Perhaps to avenge Laufey? Or to wipe Laufey's bloodline clear from the universe? To make way for their own children, born with Laufey's equally late elder sibling?

"What do you want with _me_?" he forced himself to clarify.

And as the response, a fearsome grin slowly broke across that broad face; frightening not for the ferocious show of sharp black teeth, but for the blend of wild grief and helpless rage and implacable intent in those red eyes.

"Tomorrow, you are going to nurse from your own dam, Ýmir will it."

` _Dam. – Mother. – Laufey. – Dead. –_ _ **I am going to die tomorrow**_ _._ `

The confirmation to his ongoing fear was not unexpected. But still, his breaths and heartbeats stuttered for the longest time.

` _I am going to die tomorrow._ `


	26. Homeward, Part 2

Winter's Treasures  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Confusion is not of any hindrance to survival, for a "child" who has not been a child for a long, long time. It is a weapon, instead.

26\. Homeward, Part 2

Loki asked for several things, and they were granted.

He asked to spend the remainder of the trip at the back of the skiff with Eðlenstr, _without_ the guards' and angrboða's constant scrutiny. Both parties let him be.

He asked Avlar to accompany him. The boy went, along with both of their packs.

He asked for the huge, fluffy blanket from before, to complement the second-hand travelling attire he was still wearing. Angrboða bundled him in it.

As last-wish consessions went, it was nice.

Loki was not going to just let anybody take his life, still, warranted or not. And for that purpose, he used this gesture of goodwill, macabre as it was given the context, for all it was worth. It did not only serve to provide him all the scant comfort he could get, but also to help him centre himself and provide him a chance to gather up his energy.

The store of food and drink that had been included in his pack now took a hearty pounding, and he even did not reject it when Avlar – still very much unspeaking and subdued – gave him some of the boy's own rations. The fragile state of tranquility that came from being more or less alone at the back of the skiff helped him rest and digest the increased intake of sustenance, afterwards. It was sured up further by the inexplicable senses of home and peace and safety from his new-old travelling attire and blanket. Concurrently, his awareness, muddled after so often falling into violent, taxing unconsciousness and trying to recover from that very state, gradually sharpened to _almost_ its usual acuity. It was as though he were crawling sluggishly but gratefully and relievedly out of a deep, stinking puddle of mud.

There were… _additions_ to his general perception of reality, now he noticed. They were things that he was sure he had _not_ had before, in his æsir skin, that which Koðrati had ludicrously labelled "the hot-weather skin." He would rather ignore them for the moment, however.

 _If_ he managed to escape this doom, then he would spare some thought about it, _and only then_.

A great jolt, then a great drop and a sudden tilt, as if the skiff had just collided violently with something and lost badly against it, woke Loki up from a surprisingly sound sleep with a start. He blinked, and blinked, and blinked again, vaguely noticing – with no less surprise than the one caused by the jarring movement – that he had fallen asleep with his eyes _open_.

Then he saw that, across from him, at the other side of Eðlenstr's life-support container, Avlar was looking out of one of the narrow windows with huge, terrified eyes.

` _This again!_ ` his heart wailed. But his mind, recovered through the brief respite he'd just had, the first natural sleep he'd had since he had fallen into this realm, sharpened into battle acuity. ` _ATTACK,_ ` it blared, and immediately followed with constructing the foundation of a battle plan however shaky it was. The last situation he knew, the assets and points of egress he had, the people and things he must defend, the possible permutations of the current situation, the paths he could take, the steps he needed to take any of those paths with all their advantages and disadvantages: all of them tumbled together into a chaotic, explosive mixture that set his heart pounding.

He was in a grim, grim predicament; he knew that well, seeing that he must save a petrified Avlar and an insensate Eðlenstr in addition to himself in a land he knew nothing of, armed with limited tools and practically no ally. However, he had never felt more _alive_ before this; not here on Jötunheim, not even during the battle ignited by Thor's hubris in what felt like eons ago.

So, when the door to the back of the skiff opened, while the skiff itself tilted to the opposite direction, he was _ready_.

Eðlenstr had been secured in the blanket he had relinquished _temporarily_ , which was tucked into the edges of the life-support system and serving as the anchor to a crude but powerful ward for invisibility. Avlar had been armed with two of his knives and sternly instructed to _do whatever the boy could to survive in case Loki was not there to defend him, and save Eðlenstr as well_ _ **if possible**_.

Angrboða was waiting on the door.

They shied away, faced by a brandished pair of knives and a vicious snarl, wielded by whom they saw as a _child_.

But Loki was _not_ a child. He had not been a child for a very, very long time. He had participated in a lot of mishaps, a lot of battles, a lot of rescues, even a lot of retreats. No amount of coddling and cuddling and assertion that he was a child could ever change that.

And _nobody_ could bar him from freedom. Not even himself.

So he ducked and dodged and crept and jumped and shielded and shot out repairing spells at the broken parts of the skiff. Ignoring all the deadly chaos of flying sharp things and straving burning beams of bright blue light. Ignoring all the frantic yells from panicked "allies," who were too busy trying to defend themselves and the skiff from all the attacks anyway. Ignoring how his not-so-repaired body and seiðr protested all the sudden exertion, so soon – _too soon_ – after the respite. Ignoring how he knew little to none about the skiff's mechanism, and still had too many options for what to do and where to go after this to enact a plan with a good chance of success.

And then he was before the control panel of the skiff with Ovrekka's beacon – Angrboða's own beacon, once – slotted into the hollow that seemed to be meant just for it, and the skiff struggled back to the air, like a heavily wounded bird too stubborn to die.

He was too stubborn to die, himself.

Faced with a trio of larger skiffs with guns blazing, he guided this crippled smaller skiff – _his_ skiff, if he had any say in it – to duck into an opening in the rock cliff nearby, _after_ tagging each of them with a tracing spell. From the information fed to him by the pathfinder spell he had tossed into it earlier, he derived that it was big enough for _this_ skiff from end to end, set far enough into the cliff to be protected from the attack of the guns, had no dangerous and/or sentient life signs sheltering inside, and led to various openings that would help him bypass the attackers if he was cunning and careful enough.

He had both traits aplenty in him, if he said so himself.

He should be safe.

He _would_ be safe, and so would his two charges, since he was also too stubborn to let them go.

He _still_ did not know where they would be going to. – To Tonder like Koðrati had instructed? To Útgarð like Angrboða had promised? Out of Jötunheim like Loki himself had been wishing? Back to Aglasý to throw off both pursuers and expectations, before sneaking back to drop off Avlar and Eðlenstr somewhere safe? – But he knew one thing for certain:

He would be _alive_ , and he would be _home_ , wherever he made it, because he was so _sick_ of running and hiding and losing.


End file.
